Rate My Professor Jessica Glass

Jessica Glass serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Fisheries within the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her research integrates genomic tools such as whole genome sequencing, transcriptomics, and environmental DNA (eDNA) with environmental datasets to investigate evolutionary biology, ecology, and fisheries management. She focuses on the genomic underpinnings of migration, resilience to climate change and anthropogenic stressors, and biodiversity patterns in marine and freshwater fishes and invertebrates. Specializations include population genomics, phylogenomics, biogeography, and environmental adaptation. Glass earned a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2019, an M.S. in Fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2014, and a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2010.

Glass has been recognized with the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (2011-2016), USAID Research and Innovation Fellowship (2014-2016), and NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant Fellowship (2017). She holds fellowships with The Explorers Club and serves as a Research Associate at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity. Key publications include "Prolonged morphological expansion of spiny-rayed fishes following the end-Cretaceous" (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021), "Widespread sympatry in a species-rich clade of marine fishes (Carangoidei)" (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2023), "Phylogeography of two marine predators, giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis) and bluefin trevally (Caranx melampygus), across the Indo-Pacific" (Bulletin of Marine Science, 2021), "Spatial trophic variability of a coastal apex predator, the giant trevally Caranx ignobilis, in the western Indian Ocean" (Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2020), and "Socioeconomic considerations of the commercial weathervane scallop fishery off Alaska using SWOT analysis" (Ocean & Coastal Management, 2015). She participates in initiatives such as Alaska EPSCoR Coastal Margins Team and NSF NRT Tamamta Program, and has presented public lectures including the IAB Life Sciences Seminar on kingfish and “A mammoth DNA mystery” in the Science for Alaska Lecture Series.