Bryan Finegan has Irish and British nationalities and has been working since 1985 at CATIE as a researcher, mentor to graduate students and a provider of training and technical assistance. He specializes in applied ecology, sustainable management, and restoration of the natural forests of Latin America. He leads the Forests, Biodiversity and Climate Change Program of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE); he coordinates the Chair of Ecology in the Management of Tropical Forests, CATIE and finally, he is an Affiliated Associate Professor of the Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Idaho, United States of America. During his career at CATIE he has directed or formed part of the advisory committees of more than one hundred postgraduate students. He is the author or co‐author of over 100 articles or chapters in international scientific journals and books as well as regional media in Spanish.

He is currently leading the project Socio‐ecological restoration of forests, landscapes and ecosystem services resilient to climate change in collaboration with the National Institute of Forest Sciences of the Republic of Korea. He is a member of international networks such as Forests, Landscapes and Agroforestry (FTA) with the centres of the CGIAR, and 2ndFOR, which is led from Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands.