Joseph Esnard holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree (double majors in Biology and Mathematics) from the University of the West Indies, an M.S. in Crop Protection (major: Plant Pathology) from the University of Puerto Rico, and a Ph.D. with distinctions in Plant Pathology (nematology/bacteriology) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1995, under Prof. Emeritus B.M. Zuckerman). He joined Cornell’s Plant Pathology faculty August 1997 as a Senior Research Associate with an independent Nematology research program and responsibilities for teaching graduate nematology (PL PA 706 Phytonematology).

His research program is exciting and presently focuses on biological control (specifically, the interactions of nematodes, microbes and abiotic factors in the soil environment) and nematodes as bioindicators of soil health.

He was a Caribbean Basin Initiative Research Fellow at the USDA Tropical Agriculture Research Station in Puerto Rico. From 1995 to 1997, he worked in the Plant Physiology program at North Carolina State University on two projects: mechanism of aluminum toxicity in soybean and turfgrass roots and, on free living nematodes as bioindicators of soil health in turfgrass systems.

Joseph has served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Caribbean Society for Biotechnology. His is currently chair of the multi-state regional Nematology research project NE-171 (10 State agencies participating); a member of the Biological Control Committee of the Society of Nematologists, the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Sigma Xi, Gamma Sigma Delta, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and APS. He has published in scholarly journals in Europe, America, Japan.