Excellence in Teaching, 2025
College of Life Sciences and Agriculture
Frey is a professor in the department of natural resources and the environment whose research has fundamentally changed how we think about soil. Throughout her career, she has challenged some of the most fundamental assumptions about soil biology. She has questioned long-held beliefs about the roles of bacteria versus fungi in healthy soils, pioneered a trait-based approach to understanding fungal communities, and demonstrated that microbial community structure and physiology are critical regulators of how soils respond to warming.
Frey’s work connects microbial mechanisms to climate feedbacks on a global scale. Rather than simply documenting which fungi are present, she asks how their functional characteristics respond to changing environments and what this means for forests and soils. Her long-term experiments at Harvard Forest have revealed how different fungal groups respond to warming and nitrogen deposition, with profound implications for forest carbon storage and climate change feedback.
Frey has published 139 peer-reviewed papers and has been cited more than 37,000 times. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America and a three-time Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, placing her among the top 0.1% of global scientists by citation impact. She has secured $20 million in competitive funding and received the prestigious Francis Clark Distinguished Lecturer award in 2024 from the Soil Science Society of America.
Frey is a co-founder of the Soil BioME Center, and she has mentored 47 students and postdoctoral researchers who consistently produce outstanding science. She is generous, kind, and highly collaborative, always quick to recognize others’ successes. Her work has been featured in outlets including Smithsonian Magazine and Scientific American, and she frequently shares her science with broader audiences, including farmers and other land managers.
About this Award
This award acknowledges and honors a member of the UNH faculty who has demonstrated superior creativity and success in his/her research. Research is understood to include activities that result in the generation of new ideas or works of art, the solution of fundamental problems in a particular field, or the discovery of important new facts. This award is based on the quality, originality, and significance of the recipient's scholarly work. Since university faculty are expected to be effective transmitters as well as creators of knowledge, the willingness and ability of the recipient to share knowledge and research skills with colleagues and students should be evident. Each year there will be one Award for Excellence in Research. UNH benefits-eligible faculty members are eligible, except those who have received this award within the last five years.
