Professor in Earth Systems Science, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge

Dr Andrew Friend is a Professor in Earth Systems Science in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, and a Director of Studies and Fellow in Clare College. His research interests concern controls on terrestrial vegetation type, structure, and productivity over a wide range of time and space scales and the effects of vegetation on atmospheric processes through land surface energy partitioning and carbon fluxes.

He develops numerical models in order to test our understanding of processes through the ability of these models to faithfully simulate real-world phenomena, as well as address concerns regarding the effects of global change on terrestrial ecosystems and potential future atmospheric feedbacks. He continues to develop an individual-based model of vegetation dynamics, HYBRID, with the aim of producing processed-based representations of land surface processes for coupling to global-scale atmospheric models. His current work is particularly concerned with the representation of physiological differences between plant types and species, the representation of competition, and the global-scale dynamics of biogeochemistry-climate interactions.

Dr Friend completed his undergraduate degree at UCL, and then his PhD in Ecophysiology of Mountain Plants here at Cambridge. He has since taught in Austria, America, Scotland and France, before returning to Cambridge to take up his current role.