Professor of Conservation Science, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge

Professor Andrew Balmford FRS is Professor of Conservation Science, Department of Zoology, and works primarily on how to reconcile biodiversity conservation with meeting human food and other needs, and on the costs and benefits of conservation. He has published 270 papers and been PI or CoI on grants worth >£25M. Andrew works closely with practitioners, policy-makers, and colleagues in other disciplines, including economics and psychology, and recently co-founded the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Economics.

Professor Balmford helped to establish the Cambridge Conservation Forum, a network of 1000 conservation professionals from a range of organisations, as well as the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, and the annual Student Conference on Conservation Science. He is Principal Investigator on the "Valuing the Arc" programme, which is focused on the conservation of the Eastern Arc Mountains in Tanzania.

In 2000, Professor Balmford was awarded the Zoological Society of London Marsh Award for Conservation Biology. In 2003, he was included on a list of the top 50 visionaries building a better world by Scientific American for his work on economic development and its impact on the environment.