Alexandre Antonelli (born 15 August 1978) [1] is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, [2] UK, Professor of Biodiversity and Systematic at the University of Gothenburg, [3] Sweden, and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. [4] He is a biodiversity scientist working to understand the evolution and distribution of the diversity of life on Earth and how best to protect and sustainably use it. [5] His first popular science book, The Hidden Universe: Adventures in Biodiversity, was published in July 2022. [6]
Antonelli was born and raised in Campinas, Brazil, and completed his undergraduate studies in biology in Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. [7] [8] From there, he went on to complete an MSc in Biology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which was awarded in 2003. [7] He remained at the university to pursue a PhD entitled Spatiotemporal Evolution of Neotropical Organisms: New Insights into an Old Riddle, awarded in 2009. [9] Since then, he has held a number of prestigious scientific positions, including postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Switzerland, [7] Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, [10] [7] Cisneros Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, USA, [11] [7] Science Advisor at the Universeum Science Centre, Gothenburg, and Scientific Curator at Gothenburg Botanical Garden. [7] In 2017, Antonelli founded the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre [12] and was the Director until 2019 when he moved to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to take up his current position as Director of Science. [13] He was also the founder and chairman (2015-2020) of knowme.earth, a mobile platform for logging, identifying, and sharing information about all species on Earth. [7]
Antonelli met his wife Anna while in Sweden and they have three children together. [7]
Antonelli studies the distribution, evolution, threats and sustainable uses of species and develops methods to speed up scientific discovery and innovation. [7] His work focuses on the tropics, where most species occur and the threats are most acute, [7] and he is also known for his work on mountain diversity. [14] [15] [16] Antonelli has also written on the biodiversity of the Neotropics. [17] [18] [19] [20] In December 2022, he co-authored two sister reviews in Science on the biodiversity of Madagascar. [21] [22] He has recently been exploring the application of machine learning techniques for biodiversity research and conservation [23] [24] In 2020, Antonelli led the State of the World's Plants and Fungi report, [25] a major international collaboration with an associated symposium. [26]
He was named on the Web of Science / Clarivate 2020, 2021 and 2022 ‘Highly Cited Researchers’ list, which identifies pioneering researchers in the top 1% of their field. [27]
Antonelli's taxonomic work has led to the scientific description of the following new plant species:
● Ciliosemina Antonelli (Rubiaceae) [28]
● Ciliosemina pedunculata (H.Karst.) Antonelli (Rubiaceae) [29]
● Ciliosemina purdieana (Wedd.) Antonelli (Rubiaceae) [30]
● Cordiera montana C. H. Perss., Delprete & Antonelli (Rubiaceae) [31]
Two species have also been named in his honour:
Antonelli won the Senckenberg Prize for Nature Research (2022), [34] was awarded 1st Prize (with collaborators) in the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge (2020 and 2021), [35] [36] and 2nd prize (2016), [35] was Cisneros Visiting Scholar, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University (2018), [11] was named as one of Sweden's 100 coolest researchers (2017), was a Future Research Leader, Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (2016), elected member of the Young Academy of Sweden (2016-2019), was the Wallenberg Academy Fellow, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (2014), and is an elected member of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg (2016-). [7] In 2023, he was selected to sit on the Convention on Biological Diversity's Informal Advisory Group on Technical and Scientific Cooperation. [37]
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.
Uncaria is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It has about 40 species. Their distribution is pantropical, with most species native to tropical Asia, three from Africa and the Mediterranean and two from the neotropics. They are known colloquially as gambier, cat's claw or uña de gato. The latter two names are shared with several other plants. The type species for the genus is Uncaria guianensis.
Carl Johan Fredrik Skottsberg was a Swedish botanist and explorer of Antarctica.
Paul Arnold Fryxell was an American botanist known for his work on flowering plants, especially those within the Malvaceae.
Centaurea cineraria, the velvet centaurea, is also known as dusty miller and silver dust. Centaurea cineraria is in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to Italy. In natural settings, it grows on coastal cliffs, ranging from 0–350 m above sea level. Mature plants may reach 80 centimetres (31.5 in) in height. Centaurea cineraria produces purple flowers.
Exostema is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It consists of trees and shrubs, endemic to the neotropics, with most of the species occurring in the West Indies.
Guettarda is a plant genus in the family Rubiaceae. Most of these plants are known by the common name velvetseed.
Machaonia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It has about 32 species. All are indigenous to the neotropics. None has a unique common name. Some species have been called "alfilerillo", a Spanish name for the common and well-known genus Erodium. The type species for Machaonia is Machaonia acuminata.
Sabicea is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. They are known commonly as the woodvines. The type species is Sabicea cinerea. There are about 145 species. Most are distributed in tropical Africa and South America.
Paul Carpenter Standley was an American botanist known for his work on neotropical plants.
Remijia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. Within the family, it is a member of the subfamily Cinchonoideae and the tribe Cinchoneae.
Computational sustainability is an emerging field that attempts to balance societal, economic, and environmental resources for the future well-being of humanity using methods from mathematics, computer science, and information science fields. Sustainability in this context refers to the world's ability to sustain biological, social, and environmental systems in the long term.
The Cinchoneae are a tribe of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing about 125 species in 9 genera. Representatives are found from Costa Rica to southern tropical America. Species within Cinchoneae are characterized as small trees or shrubs with imbricate or valvate corolla aestivation and often dry capsular fruits. Many species contain alkaloids.
Miocallicebus is an extinct genus of New World monkeys from the Middle Miocene. Its remains have been found at the Konzentrat-Lagerstätte of La Venta in the Honda Group of Colombia. The type species is Miocallicebus villaviejai.
Kailarsenia is a genus of flowering plants in the tribe Gardenieae of the family Rubiaceae. Its native range is Indo-China to West Malesia.
Theobroma speciosum is an arboriform species of flowering plant in the mallow family native to northern South America. It is the 35th most abundant species of tree in the Amazon rainforest.
Papuodendron is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Malvaceae. In 1946 Cyril Tenison White described its first species, Papuodendron lepidotum, which was discovered growing in 1944 in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. Its native range is New Guinea.
Rovaeanthus is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Rubiaceae.
Coprosma laevigata, the Rarotongan coprosma, is a herbaceous plant, a member of the Rubiaceae family.
Oxossia princeps is a subshrub in the genus Oxossia (Passifloraceae). It is native to the savanna of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is considered "rare", but its conservation classification is currently unknown.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2023 (link)This article needs additional or more specific categories .(October 2023) |