Award-winning conservation biologist Stuart Pimm is a member of National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative Grant Committee and a former member of National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration. He is the Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University, winner of the 2006 Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, and the author of The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities. Stuart researches how to prevent species extinctions and spends several months in Africa each year.