Claire Kremen is Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at University of California, Berkeley and Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Food Institute. She is an ecologist whose work focuses on understanding and characterizing the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services, and utilizing this information to develop conservation and sustainable management plans, considering both protected areas and the working lands matrix around them. 

Her current research focuses on exploring the ecological, social and economic benefits, costs and barriers to adoption of diversified farming systems, and on restoring pollination and pest control services in intensively farmed landscapes, using both predictive modeling and field studies. Her work reaches from theory to practice and includes hands-on conservation action such as, for example, the scientific design and establishment of a network of protected areas to protect Madagascar’s endemic flora and fauna. 

She has won numerous honors, including the prized MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her contributions to ecology, agriculture and biodiversity, the J.S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Fellowship, and election to the California Academy of Sciences. She also co-directs the Center for Diversified Farming Systems at UC Berkeley.