Andrea C. Encalada is a freshwater ecologist and professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito and she is also an Adjunct Professor of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She got her PhD from Cornell University and since then she has been working on stream and river research in tropical and temperate ecosystems. During the last 10 years she has focused her research on river structure and function along elevation gradients in Andean-Amazon watersheds. She is particularly interested in climate change and other anthropogenic changes, including drying river networks, and how these impacts might alter populations, communities, and ecosystem process.