Benjamin S. Halpern[1] is a marine biologist and ecologist currently working at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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 areas (MPAs), cumulative impacts from human activities, and more recently his leadership in developing the Ocean Health Index.
[2] 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 (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,[3] a position he still holds, and held a Chair in Marine Conservation at Imperial College London until 2018.