Professor Frank Van Veen

About me:

My background is in Biology and in Ecology in particular, but my interest in biodiversity conservation means that I have a very much interdisciplinary perspective. Currently, most of my research is focussed on forest and biodiversity conservation in the context of sustainable development in Indonesian Borneo, including the restoration of tropical peatland forests to prevent regular devastating wild fires (see https://darwinborneo.org/ and https://kali-project.com/). As part of this, we (with PGR students and collaborators) are developing AI applications for bioacoustic data for rapid large-scale assessments of biodiversity.

I am also interested in the fundamental processes that determine the structure and dynamics of networks of interacting species (food webs). By gaining a mechanistic understanding of these complex ecological systems I hope to be able to make predictions on how they, and the services they provide, will respond to environmental change. This aspect of my research mostly uses insect model systems and theory.

I am an Academic Lead for the university's Environmental Intelligence Network 

Qualifications:

1999 PhD (Imperial College London)
1994 MSc (Leiden University, The Netherlands)

Career:

2020 - present Professor of Ecology & Conservation, University of Exeter

2016 - 2020 Associate Professor of Ecology & Conservation, University of Exeter
2009-2015 Senior Lecturer in Climate Change Biology, University of Exeter
2006-2009 Research Fellow, NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park
2005-2006 Postdoctoral Research Associate, NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park
2000-2005 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Imperial College London, Silwood Park