Dr Simon Mills

I am Senior Data Scientist at Rainforest Builder, a tropical forest restoration company working to restore degraded forests in West Africa. I hold an MSc in Quantitative Biology, and a PhD on avian population dynamics. Prior to my current role, I worked as a post-doctoral researcher focussed on the biodiversity consequences of land-use change in the tropics, leading extensive field campaigns in Colombia to survey biodiversity, forest biomass, and soil carbon. I further worked on the development of new statistical methods to accommodate imperfect detection in the context of biogeographically-structured data, and the development and application of statistical methods remains a key interest.

I now focus on bringing quantitative approaches and ecological/conservation thinking to bear on problems at the applied end of forest restoration. Figuring out how to grow and restore degraded forests at the scales required to meet climate and biodiversity targets, and doing so in a rapid, sustained, and socially-equitable manner remains an as-yet unsolved problem. At Rainforest Builder, my focus is on how we bridge this implementation gap and deliver scalable, best-in-class forest restoration that can believe in.