Rate My Professor Ryan Chisholm

Ryan Chisholm is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He earned a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2010, where his advisor was Simon Levin, along with an M.A. in the same field in 2007. He also holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Statistics with Honours in Botany from the University of Melbourne, completed in 2004, and a B.A. in German from the same institution in 2001.

Chisholm is a theoretical ecologist whose research focuses on tropical forest ecology and biodiversity. His work employs mathematical and computational models to investigate mechanisms driving large-scale patterns of tree diversity in tropical forests and to estimate extinction rates in the tropics. Prior to his current role, he served as Associate Professor at NUS from 2019 to 2025 and Assistant Professor from 2012 to 2018. He completed postdoctoral research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama from 2010 to 2012. In 2025, he received the George Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America, shared with Lynette Loke for their 2023 paper. He has secured multiple Singapore Ministry of Education grants and other funding, including a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award. Notable publications include the 2025 book Theoretical Ecology with R: Concepts and Models, the 2023 Nature paper Unveiling the transition from niche to dispersal assembly in ecology co-authored with Loke, and the 2023 PNAS paper Two centuries of biodiversity discovery and loss in Singapore. He has contributed to numerous other peer-reviewed articles on topics such as neutral theory, community assembly, and conservation. Chisholm teaches courses in evolutionary biology, mathematical biology, and infectious disease modelling at NUS and has received faculty teaching excellence awards.