Dr. Tilman is a Research Economist at the USDA Forest Service, and his research integrates economics and ecology to address how people and nature can thrive on a human-dominated planet. His work leverages game theory, theoretical ecology, and ecosystem service modeling to examine how management practices can be designed to sustain environmental public goods and common-pool resources, with applications from local to global scales and across the urban to rural gradient.

He received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University in 2017 and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2011. Prior to joining the Forest Service, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and a Lecturer in the Department of Applied Economics at UMN, where he taught game theory. He is also a cross-country skier and runner.