Thomas E. Lovejoy is a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and University Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department at George Mason University. He also was the first Biodiversity Chair of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. Lovejoy introduced the term biological diversity to the scientific community in 1980. He currently is Chair of the Scientific Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multi-billion-dollar funding mechanism for developing countries in support of their obligations under international environmental conventions.He is one of two winners of the 2012 Blue Planet Prize by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Tokyo, which is described as the “Nobel prize for the environmental sciences.”