Kev Marriott is the Technical Prize Director for XPRIZE Interspecies Communication, leading the strategy, development and execution of a multi-year global competition seeking to advance humanity’s ability to understand and communicate with other species. His work sits at the intersection of animal behavior and communication, conservation science, artificial intelligence, emerging technology, and breakthrough innovation.
Kev brings an unconventional combination of experience spanning science, technology, entrepreneurship, conservation, and military special operations. Before joining XPRIZE, he spent more than a decade developing and applying technologies to wildlife conservation and protected-area management across Africa and Latin America. He co-founded Forgotten Parks Foundation, serving as Executive Director of its U.S. 501(c)(3) and Technical Director, while also providing technical advisory support to international conservation organizations.
His conservation career grew from an earlier background in technology, defense, and special operations. Kev served for 14 years in the British Army, including eight years as a UK Special Forces Communicator. Trained as a telecommunications engineer, he later co-founded technology company Kinetic Six, working with government, conservation and security organizations operating in complex environments around the world.
After transitioning into conservation, Kev combined field biology with his technical and operational experience to develop and apply new approaches to wildlife protection, monitoring and protected-area management. His work included wildlife telemetry, behavioral and acoustic monitoring, rhino tracking, and an experimental human-wildlife conflict system using species-specific and interspecies signals to influence the behavior of elephants and big cats. He was an early leader in the development and implementation of intelligence-led law enforcement for protected areas, working to modernize wildlife protection across Africa by integrating intelligence methodologies, technology, communications, and operational capability into conservation practice.
At XPRIZE, Kev has helped lead the technical design and execution of global competitions spanning biodiversity and wildfire, including XPRIZE Rainforest and XPRIZE Wildfire, and contributes to the ideation and development of future competitions across XPRIZE’s Energy, Climate and Nature portfolio.
Kev holds an MSc in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from Edinburgh Napier University. His interests increasingly center on animal minds, communication, and intelligence, and how advances in AI, bioacoustics, behavioral science, and emerging technologies may transform our ability to understand other species.
Through XPRIZE Interspecies Communication, Kev is now focused on a profound question: how might understanding and communicating with other species change science, conservation, animal welfare, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world?