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Dr Joseph Millard is a Bye-Fellow at St Edmund's College.

His research focuses on the application of large-scale statistical models to understand the causes and consequences of biodiversity change. His current role is as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge, focusing on the role of novel AI and economic mechanisms in solving biodiversity change.

Dr Millard is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. He has published across a number of areas of the biodiversity sciences and the application and ethics of AI in research. In particular, he led in developing the largest models of future global crop pollination risk resulting from human land-use and climate change, and led in developing the first real-time index of human interest in biodiversity. For such work Dr Millard was nominated twice by the Royal Society as an outstanding early career researcher. Specifically, he was selected to talk at the Royal Society at an event commemorating Prof Dame Georgina Mace, and to attend the 2025 Royal Society UK-China Early Career meeting in Beijing on biodiversity and the climate.

Dr Millard has provided scientific advice to the government at a high level, including contributing to a No. 10 SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) Cabinet Briefing on the reintroduction of COVID-19 restrictions, advising Sir Patrick Vallance on the biodiversity modelling work of the Natural History Museum, contributing towards a trade data guide for the Ecuadorian government, and writing 12 species trade reviews for the European Commission. Dr Millard has also been an expert reviewer for Conservation Letters, Ecosystem Services, Ecography, Scientific Reports, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Communications Earth & Environment, PLOS ONE, Conservation Biology, Nature Ecology and Evolution, and the UK research council BBSRC.

Prior to his current role, Dr Millard was a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, an honorary non-stipendiary research fellow of Nuffield College, an associate member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, and an employee of the Nature Publishing Group and UNEP-WCMC (UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre). He completed his PhD in Ecology jointly between University College London, the RSPB, and the Zoological Society of London, and a BSc (Zoology) and MSc (Biodiversity and Conservation) at the University of Leeds.

Academic Profile