Ecology, Conservation and Biodiversity

Queen Mary boasts expertise in ecology, conservation and biodiversity, in particular within the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences and the newly-formed Digital Environment Research Institute. In the latest UK Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021), 10% of Queen Mary’s impact case studies involved biodiversity. We are now strategically expanding our expertise in computational and data-science approaches related to ecology, conservation and biodiversity with the aim of integrating sustainable agriculture with conservation, and in support of the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework. 

Examples of QM staff working in this field:  

• Dr Axel Rossberg is a leading theoretical ecologist and biodiversity modeller interested in structure and dynamics of food-webs, biodiversity, and the relationships between them.  

• Dr Ian McFadden is a computational ecologist interested in using computer vision and machine learning to study and conserve species interactions from the local scale to that of the whole earth. They have published recent world-leading papers on the impact of climate on ecology in journals including Nature, Nature Communications, and Nature Ecology & Evolution. 

• Dr Samuel Pironon develops large-scale data analysis, including machine-learning, to assess the effects of global change on biodiversity and its contributions to people, and to develop nature-based solutions to help tackle the ongoing biodiversity, climate and food crises. 

• Dr James Hansford is a new hire using machine learning and Bayesian clustering methodologies to describe patterns of species evolution and distribution, with a particular focus on complex paleontological data. 

Research Centre:  
Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainability