Lord May was President of the Royal Society (2000 – 2005) and holds a Professorship jointly in the Department of Zoology, Oxford University, and at Imperial College, London. He is also a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.  For a five-year period ending in September 2000, he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Government and Head of the Office of Science and Technology, playing an influential role in national scientific affairs, and was knighted for his efforts in 1996.

An Executive Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, a Board Member of the UK Sport Institute, and a Foundation Trustee of Cambridge University’s Gates Trust, Lord May has also held previous posts in the UK including: Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London; Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Independent Member of the Joint Nature Conservancy Councils (JNCC); Trustee of WWF (UK); and President of the British Ecological Society.

Lord May is promoting solutions to a wide range of issues through his work, including ecological preservation, urgent environmental problems such as global warming, and various problems related to medicine and biology.