Jeremy Kerr

Professor of Biology, University of Ottawa
Dr. Jeremy Kerr is Professor of Biology at University of Ottawa. His primary research seeks to discover how the environmental change affects biodiversity. This work has led to discoveries with broad impact, most recently around how and why climate change has affected species survival. He has published extensively and impactfully in the scientific literature, and publicly through media interviews globally.

Dr. Kerr is strongly engaged in public science and policy work in areas related to his research. He is Past-President of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, and an alumnus of the Global Young Academy. He has been elected to Fellowship in the Royal Society of Biology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honour Society. He is an executive member of Council for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, appointed by Federal Cabinet, and is Chair of its Committee on Discovery Research. He co-chairs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Global Science Forum’s working group on citizen science and is a co-founder of e-Butterfly, one of Canada’s earliest and most successful citizen science/participatory research programs.

He has appeared as an expert witness before Standing Committees in the House of Commons on biodiversity and conservation issues (2019), the strengths and weaknesses of scientific research activities in Canada (2022), citizen science (2023), and on how research is evaluated in Canada relative (2024). Dr. Kerr has presented his research to Parliamentarians, staff, and research agencies in Parliament as part of the Royal Society of Canada-sponsored speaker series (2017).