Gareth Anthony Pearson received a B.Sc. (Honors) in 1986 in Marine Biology from the University of Liverpool, and a PhD in 1990 from the University of Leeds. He is a Principal Investigator in the Centre for Marine Sciences (CCMAR), University of Algarve. Published >100 articles in indexed and peer-reviewed journals (H-index = 47, over 7000 citations). Supervised or co-supervised 10 PhD theses, and 12 MSc dissertations. Research questions cover a range of patterns and processes mediating function and evolution of marine biodiversity at the genetic level, from ecological to deep evolutionary scales. Topics include causes and consequences of variation in genetic biodiversity, population connectivity, environmental genomics, and adaptive evolution, in the context of climate and environmental change. These are studied across a diversity of marine systems that play important ecological roles in our planet, from intertidal organisms to polar plankton, deep corals, kelp forests and seagrass meadows.