Why is a multi-disciplinary approach key to addressing biodiversity loss? Listen to Jason Mitchell discuss with Professor Simon Levin, Princeton University, about what’s at stake in the effort to preserve biodiversity loss; how his work has expanded into the sociological, political economy and policy space; and why a common language — a grammar for economic reasoning — is vital for bringing together different disciplines to understand nature.

Professor Simon Levin is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and the Director of the Center for BioComplexity in the High Meadows Environmental Institute. His research examines the structure and functioning of ecosystems, the dynamics of disease, and the coupling of ecological and socioeconomic systems. Simon is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, and the Istituto Lombardo. He has over 500 publications and is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity and the Princeton Guide to Ecology. Simon’s awards include: the Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Ecological Society of America’s MacArthur and Eminent Ecologist Awards, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the National Medal of Science.