Miles R. Silman is Professor of Conservation Biology at the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation and Director of the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University. He is an ecologist and researcher interested in the study of life and its distribution in the world, both in space and through time, understanding the roles and interactions between species in the structuring of the world we see and inhabit. 

Silman has been working in the Western Amazon and the Andes for the past 25 years to not only understand but also protect the world's last forests. Silman's conservation projects include work on tropical agriculture, remediation of soils degraded by gold mining, and monitoring and evaluation of deforestation. The results of their research on Andean and Amazonian forests have been used to generate private and public ecosystem services projects that change land use by generating income for conservation and creating economic and social value for people living in the region.