Brenda Rashleigh is a Research Ecologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Athens, Georgia, USA. She obtained a B.S. in Biological Science from the University of Vermont, an M.S. in Environmental Science/Water Resources from Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee. She worked for the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Assessment Program, Upper Tennessee River Basin, before coming to EPA in 1998.
Her work at the EPA involves ecological modeling and statistical analysis of ecological populations and communities in streams, rivers, lakes, and estuaries. She is the author of more than 10 scientific publications, a reviewer for several aquatic ecology journals, and a co-editor of the 2007 book entitled Assessment of the Fate and Effects of Toxic Agents on Water Resources. Her current research interests include the development of predictive habitat models for fish and shellfish in estuaries; spatially-explicit metapopulation models for fish and mussels in stream networks; and the relative roles of multiple stressors affecting fish and benthic macroinvertebrate communities in rivers.