Benjamin S. Halpern is a marine biologist and ecologist currently working at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

. His research has addressed a broad range of questions that span local to global scales, including spatial population dynamics, trophic interactions in community ecology, and the interface between ecology and human dynamics, all with the ultimate aim of informing and facilitating conservation and resource management efforts in marine systems. He is widely known for his research on

marine protected area A marine protected area (MPA) is a protected area of the world's seas, oceans, estuaries or in the US, the Great Lakes. These marine areas can come in many forms ranging from wildlife refuges to research facilities. MPAs restrict human activity ...

s (MPAs), cumulative impacts from human activities, and more recently his leadership in developing the Ocean Health Index.

Early life and education

Halpern was born in

Eugene Eugene may refer to: People and fictional characters * Eugene (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Gene Eugene, stage name of Canadian born actor, record producer, engineer, composer and musi ...

, Oregon, and spent his childhood there. He earned his B.A. in Biology from

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1866, the main campus is between Northfield and the approximately Carleton ...

in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Marine Ecology from the

in 2003.

Career

After completing his Ph.D., Halpern held a joint Postdoctoral Fellowship through the David H. Smith program and the

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) is a research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in Santa Barbara, California. Better known by its acronym, NCEAS (pronounced “n-seas”) opened in May 1995. F ...

(NCEAS). He was then a Research Scientist based at NCEAS until 2013 when he started as faculty at UCSB's

Bren School of Environmental Science & Management The UC Santa Barbara Bren School of Environmental Science and Management is the graduate environmental studies school of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The mission of the Bren School is to play a leading role in researching environ ...

, a position he still holds, and held a Chair in Marine Conservation at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

until 2018. In 2016 he became Executive Director of NCEAS.

Awards and honors

He is recognized for marine conservation and resource management and was the recipient of the 2016 A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in the Marine Sciences. In 2017 he was inducted as a Fellow in the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, that is among the largest List of natural history museums, museums of natural history in the world, housing over ...

and won the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in Science. In 2018 he was awarded the Ocean Award for Science; in 2020 he was elected a Fellow of the

Ecological Society of America The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a professional organization of ecological scientists. Based in the United States and founded in 1915, ESA publications include peer-reviewed journals, newsletters, fact sheets, and teaching resources. I ...

. In 2024 he was selected as a Selby Fellow by the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soci ...

. He was also recognized by Thomson-Reuters as One of the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Halpern, Benjamin Living people Carleton College alumni University of California, Santa Barbara alumni American marine biologists American ecologists University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Year of birth missing (living people)