Mary E. Power is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has studied food webs in temperate and tropical rivers, as well as linkages of rivers, watersheds and near-shore environments. Focal organisms include cyanobacteria, algae, invertebrates, fish, estuarine crustaceans and terrestrial grasshoppers, spiders, lizards, birds, and bats. By studying how key ecological interactions depend on landscape and temporal contexts, she and her students hope to learn how river-structured ecosystems will respond to change in climate, land use, and biota. Her group also collaborates closely with Earth and atmospheric scientists in site-based research to investigate linkages between rivers and the subsurface critical zones that mediate their flow regimes.

She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Umea University, the Kempe Medal for distinguished ecologist, the Hutchinson Award from the American Society of Limnologists and Oceanographers, and the Award of Excellence from the Society of Freshwater Science. She is a member of the California Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Sciences. She has served on the Editorial Boards of PNAS (2014 to present), Science (2006-2009), and Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (2011 to present). Power also served as President of the American Society of Naturalists, and of the Ecological Society of America. Since 1988, she has been the Faculty Director of the Angelo Coast Range Reserve in Mendocino, California.