Alexandre Antonelli

Alexandre Antonelli (born 15 August 1978) is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, Professor of Biodiversity and Systematic at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. 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. His first popular science book, The Hidden Universe: Adventures in Biodiversity, was published in July 2022.

Biography
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. From there, he went on to complete an MSc in Biology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which was awarded in 2003. He remained at the university to pursue a PhD entitled Spatiotemporal Evolution of Neotropical Organisms: New Insights into an Old Riddle, awarded in 2009. Since then, he has held a number of prestigious scientific positions, including postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zurich, Switzerland, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the University of Gothenburg, Cisneros Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, USA, Science Advisor at the Universeum Science Centre, Gothenburg, and Scientific Curator at Gothenburg Botanical Garden. In 2017, Antonelli founded the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre 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. 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.

Antonelli met his wife Anna while in Sweden and they have three children together.

Research
Antonelli studies the distribution, evolution, threats and sustainable uses of species and develops methods to speed up scientific discovery and innovation. His work focuses on the tropics, where most species occur and the threats are most acute, and he is also known for his work on mountain diversity. Antonelli has also written on the biodiversity of the Neotropics. In December 2022, he co-authored two sister reviews in Science on the biodiversity of Madagascar. He has recently been exploring the application of machine learning techniques for biodiversity research and conservation  In 2020, Antonelli led the State of the World's Plants and Fungi report, a major international collaboration with an associated symposium.

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.

Plant species named
Antonelli's taxonomic work has led to the scientific description of the following new plant species:

●    Ciliosemina Antonelli (Rubiaceae)

●    Ciliosemina pedunculata (H.Karst.) Antonelli (Rubiaceae)

●    Ciliosemina purdieana (Wedd.) Antonelli (Rubiaceae)

●    Cordiera montana C. H. Perss., Delprete & Antonelli (Rubiaceae)

Two species have also been named in his honour:


 * Siphocampylus antonellii Lagom. & D. Santam. (Campanulaceae)
 * Camaridium antonellii O.Pérez & Bogarín (Orchidaceae)

Recognition
Antonelli won the Senckenberg Prize for Nature Research (2022), was awarded 1st Prize (with collaborators) in the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge (2020 and 2021), and 2nd prize (2016), was Cisneros Visiting Scholar, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University (2018), 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-). In 2023, he was selected to sit on the Convention on Biological Diversity's Informal Advisory Group on Technical and Scientific Cooperation.