Behnaz Balmaki, PhD

Behnaz Balmaki, PhD
Assistant Professor of Environmental Science
Office: ASSC 327
Email: bbalmaki@twu.edu

Balmaki is an environmental scientist with more than a decade of research experience in ecology, biodiversity conservation and environmental management. Her work focuses on pollination ecology and ecological networks, with particular attention to how pollinators and plant communities respond to environmental disturbances such as habitat loss, fragmentation, invasive species, and climate variation. She analyzes pollen grains to study plant–pollinator interactions, with emphasis on honey bees, bumblebees, native bees and butterflies. By integrating pollen analysis with spatial analysis, GIS, remote sensing, advanced data analysis and AI-driven machine learning methods, she monitors ecological dynamics across space and time. Balmaki's research includes honey quality analysis as well as allergy monitoring and its implications for human health. Through this integrative approach, Balmaki quantifies ecological interactions and ecosystem processes, producing evidence-based insights that inform conservation planning, ecosystem assessment, food security, public health and sustainable resource management.

Education:

Postdoctoral associate, Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech
Postdoctoral scholar, Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno
PhD, Geological Sciences & Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno

Selected publications:

Rostami, M.A., Kydd, L., Balmaki, B., Dyer, L.A., and Allen, J.M. (2025). Deep learning for accurate classification of conifer pollen grains: enhancing species identification in palynology. Frontiers in Big Data 8: 1507036.

Balmaki, B., Rostami, M.A., Allen, J.M., and Dyer, L.A. (2024). Effects of climate variation on Lepidoptera pollen loads and their pollination services in space and time. Oecologia 204: 751–759.

Rostami, M.A., Balmaki, B., et al. (2023). Efficient pollen grain classification using pre-trained Convolutional Neural Networks: a comprehensive study. Journal of Big Data 10: 151.

Balmaki, B., Rostami, M.A., Christensen, T., Leger, E.A., Allen, J.M., Feldman, C.R., Forister, M.L., and Dyer, L.A. (2022). Modern approaches for leveraging biodiversity collections to understand change in plant–insect interactions. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 10: 924941.

Balmaki, B., Christensen, T., and Dyer, L.A. (2022). Reconstructing butterfly–pollen interaction networks through periods of anthropogenic drought in the Great Basin (USA) over the past century. Anthropocene 37: 100325.

Balmaki, B., Wigand, P., Frontalini, F., Shaw, A.T., Avnaim-Katav, S., and Rostami, M.A. (2019). Late Holocene paleoenvironmental changes in the Seal Beach Wetland (California, USA): a micropaleontological perspective. Quaternary International 530–531: 14–24.

Balmaki, B., and Wigand, P.E. (2019). Reconstruction of the Late Pleistocene to Late Holocene vegetation transition using packrat midden and pollen evidence from the central Mojave Desert. Acta Botanica Brasilica 33(3): 539–547.