The Chair Holder

Miguel B. Araújo has authored over 100 publications in internationally refereed journals and books and is one of the top 0.001% most cited researchers in the field of environment/ ecology (h index=42). Within this field, and according to ISI Essential Science Indicators, he is the highest-cited Portuguese scientist (World position=19). Prof. Araújo has published in the highest ranking journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, and TREE. Several papers passed the threshold of “highly cited”, and some were listed as “hot papers” by ISI. The impact of his research appeals broadly, with several papers having been featured by the International press, as well as by scientific magazines, such as the National Geographic Magazine, Nature’ Reports on Climate Change, the New Scientist, Science’ New Focus, the Scientific American, and the Scientist.

Currently, he is the ‘Rui Nabeiro’ Chair of Biodiversity (visiting full Professor) at University of Évora and a senior researcher of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). Prof. Araújo is also visiting full professor at the University of Copenhagen's Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, and a member of the International Laboratory on Global Change, a joint venture between the CSIC and the Pontificia Catholic University of Chile.

Prof. Araújo serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Ecography, associate editor of the Journal of Biogeography, Conservation Letters, Geography Compass, and is member of the scientific committee of DIVERSITAS’ bioDISCOVERY programme. Miguel B. Araújo contributed to the 2007 4th IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) Assessment Report, for which the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

After reading for his PhD in Geography at the University College London and the Natural History Museum, he undertook post doctoral research in the ‘Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionelle et Evolutive‘ at the CNRS in Montpellier. He was then awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to undertake research at the University of Oxford, after which he spent a year at the University of Copenhagen as a visiting Associate Professor. Currently, he continues to travel extensively, and remains an active collaborator of several research groups in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, France, South Africa, Switzerland, US, and UK.

Miguel B. Araújo has a wide range of interests in biogeography, conservation planning, global change biology, and macroecology. Earlier work included the development of reserve-selection techniques that minimise species extinctions within reserves. It was demonstrated that proposed techniques can improve persistence of species. More recently, niche models have been used to investigate impacts of climate change on species’ distributions. The goal is to better understand the sources of uncertainty in models and to propose approaches to reduce them. A study provided the first test of the performance of models under climate change and demonstrated the value of ensemble forecasting. Currently, research focuses on the history of global climates during the Tertiary and the Quaternary and how these affected current patterns of species richness.