Francisco Bozinovic

One of the most highly regarded ecologists and evolutionary biologists in the world, Francisco Bozinovic is a Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies in Ecology and Biodiversity at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

A growing interest in environmental biology and natural history, developed during his undergraduate years at the Universidad de Chile (Licentiate in Sciences, 1983), led him to pursue better training in the mechanistic basis of ecology, more recently termed macrophysiology, as a doctoral student at the same university under the direction of Mario Rosenmann and with the support of a Fellowship and a grant from FONDECYT. Even before receiving his Ph.D. in 1990, his researches produced several papers, coauthored with Rosenmann, that were published in important journals: “Comparative energetic of South American cricetid rodents,” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, 91A (1988); “Maximum metabolic rate of rodents: physiological and ecological consequences on distributional limits,” Functional Ecology, 3 (1989); and (also with M. Canals) “Geometry and energetics of huddling in small mammals,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 141 (1989).

Chile’s Andes Foundation and the Carnegie Institution helped fund his postdoctoral work at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, where, using respirometry and the newly developed computer-facilitated radiotelemetry technique, he studied thermal biology and seasonal changes in non-shivering thermogenesis of free-ranging small mammals. Further researches followed at Arizona State University and Princeton University before he returned to Chile in 1992 to take up a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecological Sciences at his alma mater. Four years later, he began his tenure in the Department of Ecology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he still teaches and conducts research. He was promoted to full professor there in 2002.

Characterizing himself as an integrative biologist, Francisco Bozinovic directs research in his lab that ranges from the molecular level to the study of entire populations of organisms with the aim of better understanding threats to various species posed by climate change. In addition to supervising many graduate and postgraduate researchers, he has written over 200 ISI-indexed scientific papers, over a dozen book chapters, and the first Spanish-language book on ecological and evolutionary physiology of animals: Fisiología Ecológica y Evolutiva.

A leader in the field of evolutionary physiological ecology, Francisco Bozinovic is a member of many important societies in his field, including the British Ecological Society, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, and the Spanish Society of Evolutionary Biology, and has served as president of the Ecological Society of Chile and the Biological Society of Chile. He has also been a visiting professor at the Argentine universities in Buenos Aires, San Luis, Mar del Plata, and Comahue; Powdermill Biological Station, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California, among other American institutions; the University of Zagreb in Croatia; Stellenbosch University in South Africa; and the Universidad de la República in Uruguay; among others.

He has been an editorial board member of such important journals as Comparative Biochemistry & Physiology A, Evolutionary Ecology Research, Revista Chilena de Historia Natural, and Mastozoologia Neotropical.

Francisco Bozinovic is an elected member of the Chilean National Academy of Sciences, and recipient of the Universidad de Chile Award in the sciences and humanities, the Distinguished Scientist Medal from the Chile’s Croatian community, the Scopus Award from Elsevier, and the Patricio Sánchez Award from the Ecological Society of Chile.