Hugh Possingham

Professor Possingham is a conservation scientist and mathematician who completed his PhD at Oxford in 1987 as a Rhodes Scholar and was most recently the Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organisation operating in 79 countries.

His most significant contribution to conservation was the co-development of Marxan, software first used to rezone the Great Barrier Reef, and now used in almost every country in the world to inform the expansion of their marine and terrestrial protected area systems.

He is an avid birder and citizen scientist, he is currently on the board of directors of BirdLife Australia.