Prof. Alexandre Antonelli University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Professor Alexandre Antonelli is the Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He is also Professor in Biodiversity and Systematics at the University of Gothenburg and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. He was the founder and first Director of the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, established during... read morehis time as Scientific Curator of the Gothenburg Botanical Garden, and was also the founder and first Chairperson of knowme.earth, a digital platform to make species identification accessible through connecting the scientific community with everyone else.

Antonelli’s passion is nature, and his mission is to stop biodiversity loss. To tackle this major challenge, he studies the distribution and evolution of species and develops methods to speed up scientific discovery. His research focuses on the tropics, where most species occur and the threats are most acute. He has published over 190 scientific articles and book chapters and his work has been cited over 9,000 times. He was named on the Web of Science/Clarivate ‘2020 Highly Cited Researchers’ list, which identifies pioneering researchers in the top 1% of their field.

In 2021, Antonelli is leading the development of a new science mission and strategy for Kew, which will define how Kew scientists can tackle biodiversity loss and help to address global challenges using plant and fungi-based solutions.