Professor Kamal Bawa FRS

Kamal Bawa is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His discoveries of unusual breeding systems, novel pollination mechanisms, and long distance gene flow in tropical forest trees changed the prevailing notions about population biology and evolution of these trees. He proposed new hypotheses for the evolution of almost every major type of breeding system in plants. Later, he extended his work from population biology to sustainable use of forest resources, conservation of large tropical landscapes, and climate change. 

Kamal Bawa is also Founder-President of the Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE: www.Atree.org), an innovative environmental think tank that fosters the generation of interdisciplinary knowledge to address pressing challenges emerging from interaction between environment and development.   

Among the many awards Kamal Bawa has received are: Giorgio Ruffolo Fellowship at Harvard University, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science, and the MIDORI Prize in Biodiversity.  He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

Subject groups

  • Organismal biology, evolution and ecology

    Environmental biology

Professor Kamal Bawa FRS
Elected 2015