Dr. José F. González-Maya is a biologist who graduated from the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica (2004), holds a Magister Scientiae in Management and Conservation of Tropical Forests and Biodiversity from the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center - CATIE (Costa Rica, 2008), and a PhD in Sciences with honors from the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2015).

He is a Level C Tenured Research Professor and Head of the Conservation Biology Area at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Lerma Campus, where he teaches courses on Community Ecology, Functional Ecology, Biodiversity Axes, Ecology and Ecosystems, Biogeography, and Scientific Articles, among others. He also serves as Co-chair of the IUCN Colombia Species Specialist Group and as a Trustee and Board member of The Linnean Society of London.

Author of more than 160 scientific articles, 20 books, and over 30 chapters, he has participated in more than 50 national and international conferences and has more than 5,500 citations of his work (H=32). His research covers a wide spectrum of topics, from ecology and natural history, macroecology, and biogeography, to conservation biology and the science-policy interface, as well as research applied to decision-making and land-use planning. Additionally, he is the founder of the Colombian Society of Mammalogy and the journals Mammalogy Notes and the Latin American Journal of Conservation, while also serving on multiple committees and editorial boards for journals such as Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, Conservation, and PLOS Ecosystems, and is the President of the Editorial Board of the DCBS at UAM Lerma.

For his work, Dr. González-Maya has received numerous recognitions, including the Jaguar Awards for nature conservation (Ford Motor Company), the William T. Hornaday and Oliver P. Pearson awards from the American Society of Mammalogists, the Future for Nature Award (Netherlands, 2015), and the Friends of the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical, and Natural Sciences Award, among others, and has been awarded more than 20 international research grants.