Kent Carpenter has managed the Marine Biodiversity Unit of the Global Species Programme of the IUCN since 2005. He completed undergraduate studies in Marine Biology at the Florida Institute of Technology and his graduate studies in Marine Zoology at the University of Hawaii. He was a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer and post-doctoral research associate in the Philippines, a marine scientist at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, and a Senior Fisheries Research Officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, Italy. His primary research interests are marine conservation biology, systematics and evolution of bony fishes, ecology of coral reefs, and marine biogeography and phylogeography of the Indo-West Pacific.