Max Telford

Max Telford is an evolutionary biologist in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London where he holds the Jodrell Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. He is the founding director of the Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE) at UCL.

Max’s research is broadly aimed at understanding the earliest events in the evolution of the animals. Over the past three decades he has worked to understand how the most distinct groups of animals are related to each other. His ultimate goal is a complete and accurate tree describing the relationships of animals.

Max took his BA and DPhil degrees in the Department of Zoology in Oxford. He worked in Paris, the Natural History Museum and the University of Cambridge before taking up his post at UCL in 2003. In 2022-2023 he has been a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He has received an EMBO Young Investigator award, the Linnean Bicentennial medal and a Wolfson/Royal Society Research Merit award.