Diane M. O’Brien was appointed as the Interim Director of the Institute of Arctic Biology (IAB) in July 2021. Dr. Diane O’Brien earned a BA from Amherst College in 1991 and a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 1998. She held postdoctoral positions at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory and a faculty position at Wellesley College prior to joining UAF in 2004. She has been a faculty member with IAB and the Department of Biology and Wildlife and joined the Center for Alaska Native Health Research in 2007. She was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2009 and promoted to Professor in 2015. Her research is in human nutritional epidemiology and ecology with a focus on natural abundance stable isotope approaches to characterize diets and nutrient flow.

Major organized research programs at IAB include the USGS-funded Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (AKCFWRU), the NSF-funded Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research Program (BNZ LTER), the Center for Alaska Native Health Research (CANHR), and the NIH-funded Alaska IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence(INBRE), and the Center for Transformative Research in Metabolism(TRiM). Research facilities at IAB include the Genomics Core Laboratory, IAB's Research Greenhouse, the Molecular Imaging Facility, and the Toolik Field Station.