Bruno David is Director of Research at the CNRS, assigned to the Biogeosciences Laboratory at the University of Burgundy. His research has always focused on biological evolution on different time scales, successively using fossil and present-day models. Following an initial career as a paleontologist focusing on Cretaceous faunas in the early years of his career, he switched to the biology of organisms and populations. He is now a marine biologist whose research focuses on echinoderms, particularly sea urchins. After an interest in deep ocean faunas, he is currently working on sea urchin biodiversity in the Antarctic Ocean and its future in the context of global change, as well as on the evolution of symbioses between crabs and sea urchins in the Caribbean. He is also interested in the origin and development of 5th-order radiating symmetry in echinoderms. He is the author of over 100 scientific publications. His main international research collaborations are with Belgium (ULB, Brussels and Ghent University), Chile (Universidad de Chile in Santiago) and the United States (California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco).
In the course of his career, he has carried out major field missions, notably in Antarctica and the Southern Territories, the Caribbean and Africa. He also took part in several oceanographic missions on Ifremer and TAAF vessels.
He was director of the CNRS Biogeosciences laboratory for 12 years, and has held various positions at the University of Burgundy, the CNRS and the Institut Français de la Biodiversité. He is currently Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, and is in charge of marine biodiversity at the Institut Écologie et Environnement of the CNRS.
Winner of the Prix de Lamothe from the Société Géologique de France, he is a Fellow of the Willi Hennig Society and a Fellow of the Linnean Society in London.
