I am the leader of the Group Spatial Evolutionary Ecology since 2016, Head of the newly created Center for Biodiversity at WSL since 2020, and Adjunct Professor Stony Brook University, New York since 2016.  I studied ecology, evolution and systematics at the University of Missouri where I gained my PhD in 2000.  After a postdoc at UC-Berkeley in California I became a Professor at Stony Brook University in 2003.

I have an international standing as a Global Highly Cited Researcher (top 1% by citations) and holds an ERC-Advanced grant.  At the WSL I conduct research on tropical forest diversity, global macro-ecology and more recently, on mechanisms influencing patterns of biological diversity in Europe and Switzerland.