Dr Joseph Millard
- Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
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About
Life on Earth is experiencing a rapid period of change. Human activities such as land-use, climate change, and over-exploitation are causing a significant restructuring of biodiversity worldwide, likely on the scale of a mass extinction. In parallel, the semiconductive properties of silicon and the scalability of the transistor have led to a revolution in computing, ushering in a new age of scientific progress. This computer revolution has enabled new tools and ways of thinking. For ecology, computers have significantly developed our understanding of ecosystems and global biodiversity change.
In my work I use computational models and data to investigate the causes and consequences of global biodiversity change. I have a broad interest in biodiversity modelling, ecological economics, ecosystem service risk projection (particularly crop pollination), digital metrics for monitoring human-nature interactions, evidence synthesis, the application and ethics of AI in research, and future thinking for biodiversity change prediction and solutions.
My current role is as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Agroecology Research Group, focusing on the potential future role of central bank digital currency, spatial finance, programmable payment, and ensemble biodiversity models, in solving at least the most important dimensions of long-term systemic risk emergent from biodiversity change. I've been actively involved in helping shape the development and philosophy of the GLiTRS project, OpenNature, and ECHO Labs. I've warned of the risks new forms of autonomous biodiversity credit might pose in the near future. I won funding from ARIA to imagine a new kind of generative agent-based general ecosystem model, combining foundational Earth-observation models such as TESSERA and generative agent-based simulation in Concordia.
Prior to my current role I've done a varied bunch of things, including leading the development of the Species Awareness Index and the meta-analytic platform Dynameta; building a multi-threat meta-analytic database for insect biodiversity change; warning of the risks large language models pose for research group friendship and pastoral support; co-designing a concept for ensemble threat-response models for predicting global insect biodiversity change; designing global models for projecting future risks to global crop production via pollinator losses; building automated data-handling systems for CITES data; co-writing a wildlife trade data guide for the Ecuadorian government; working on the in-house editorial team for the Nature Publishing Group at the journal Scientific Reports; writing species wildlife trade reviews for the European Commission; and contributing towards the efforts of SAGE through a No. 10 Cabinet Briefing on the reintroduction of behavioural interventions for COVID-19.
Academic History
2024 – present: Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Cambridge
2024: Visiting Researcher, University of Cambridge
2022 – 2024: Postdoctoral Researcher, Natural History Museum (London)
2021 – 2022: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oxford (Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science)
2017 – 2021: PhD Computational Ecology, University College London
2016 – 2017: Programme Assistant, UNEP WCMC
2015 – 2016: Publishing Assistant, Nature Publishing Group
2014 – 2015: MSc Biodiversity and Conservation, University of Leeds
2011 – 2014: BSc Zoology, University of Leeds
Research
Key Publications
Skinner, G.L., Cooke, R., Roy, H.E., Isaac, N.J., Outhwaite, C.L., Rodger, J. and Millard, J., 2026. Meta-analysis reveals negative but highly variable impacts of invasive alien species across terrestrial insect orders. Nature Communications, 17(1), p.296.
Millard, J., Outhwaite, C.L., Kinnersley, R., Freeman, R., Gregory, R.D., Adedoja, O., Gavini, S., Kioko, E., Kuhlmann, M., Ollerton, J. and Ren, Z.X., 2021. Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity. Nature Communications, 12(1), p.2902.
Millard, J., Outhwaite, C.L., Ceaușu, S., Carvalheiro, L.G., da Silva e Silva, F.D., Dicks, L.V., Ollerton, J. and Newbold, T., 2023. Key tropical crops at risk from pollinator loss due to climate change and land use. Science Advances, 9(41), p.eadh0756.
Cooke, R., Outhwaite, C. L., Bladon, A. J., Millard, J., Rodger, J. G., Dong, Z., Dyer, E. E., Edney, S., Murphy, J. F., Dicks, L. V., Hui, C., Jones, J. I., Newbold, T., Purvis, A., Roy, H. E., Woodcock, B. A. and Isaac, N. J. (2025). Integrating multiple evidence streams to understand insect biodiversity change. Science. 388(45)
Millard, J., Skinner, G., Bladon, A. J., Cooke, R., Outhwaite, C. L., Rodger, J. G., Barnes, L. A., Isip, J., Keum, J., Raw, C., Wenban-Smith, E., Dicks, L. V., Hui, C., Jones, J. I., Woodcock, B., Isaac, N. J., Purvis, A. (2025). A multi-threat meta-analytic database for understanding insect biodiversity change. Diversity and Distributions
Millard, J., Freeman, R. and Newbold, T., 2020. Text‐analysis reveals taxonomic and geographic disparities in animal pollination literature. Ecography, 43(1), pp.44-59.
Millard, J., Gregory, R.D., Jones, K.E. and Freeman, R., 2021. The species awareness index as a conservation culturomics metric for public biodiversity awareness. Conservation Biology, 35(2), pp.472-482.
Millard, J., Christie, A.P., Dicks, L.V., Isip, J.E., Johnson, T.F., Skinner, G. and Spake, R., 2024. ChatGPT is likely reducing opportunity for support, friendship and learned kindness in research. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 15(10), pp.1764-1766.
Skinner, G., Cooke, R., Keum, J., Purvis, A., Raw, C., Woodcock, B.A. and Millard, J., 2023. Dynameta: A dynamic platform for ecological meta-analyses in R Shiny. SoftwareX, 23(101439)
Dorm, F., Millard, J., Purves, D., Harfoot, M. and Mac Aodha, O., 2026. Large language models possess some ecological knowledge, but how much? Ecological Informatics, (95)103699
