Profile – Professor Michael Hassell CBE FRS
I felt greatly honoured when approached to be Chairman of the NBN Trust. Recording the UK’s plants, animals and fungi and making these data available as a resource for both public and professionals is at the very heart of understanding and preserving our wildlife heritage, and to be part of this is particularly exciting.
My own background is in population biology with a special interest in the dynamics of insect populations. This was kindled by three inspirational George’s: George Salt as my undergraduate tutor at Cambridge and then by George Varley and George Gradwell, my DPhil supervisors at Oxford. After a year at the University of California, Berkeley and then a NERC Fellowship back at Oxford, I went as a Lecturer to Imperial College, based at their Silwood Park Field Station outside Ascot. And there, contrary to my early expectations, I stayed, working up the ranks until retiring in 2007. Apart from research success, it was (more latterly) a time of learning how to run departments and faculties (and not letting meetings run over time!). Outside Imperial College, it was most rewarding to be President of the British Ecological Society, on the Councils of NERC, The Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society, and spending several years as a Trustee of the Natural History Museum.
Now that I have ‘retired’, my time will be spent between the NBN, being Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, that appears twice a month and some other tasks such as work for the European Research Council. Happily, this still leaves good time for my wife and I and our dogs to revel in the beautiful countryside of North Devon.
Under the stewardship of our out-going Chairman, Sir Neil Chalmers, the NBN developed a very important 10-year strategy to drive forwards the further development of the NBN. I am really looking forward to helping to deliver on this and looking for new ways in which we can further realise the potential of the NBN as an indispensable resource for the UK.