Scientific Program > Keynote-speakers

Keynote Speakers

Keynote speakers include:

• Professor Nathan Bindoff (University of Tasmania)
• Professor Patrick De Deckker (Australian National University)
• Professor Chris Reason (University of Cape Town)
• Professor Michael Reeder (Monash University)
• Professor Jean Palutikof (Griffith University)
• Professor Steven Sherwood (University of New South Wales)

See below for biographical sketches.

An overview of the conference themes is given in the first call for abstracts: amos2010flier.pdf (the list of keynote speakers in this flier is out of date).

Professor Nathan Bindoff

Web page

Professor Nathan Bindoff is Professor of Physical Oceanography at the University of Tasmania, and CSIRO Marine Research Laboratories, Director of the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing and Project Leader of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre's Modelling Program. Professor Bindoff is a physical oceanographer, specialising in ocean climate and the earth's climate system. He was the coordinating lead author for the ocean chapter in the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report.

His current interests are primarily in understanding how the changing ocean can be used to infer changes in atmosphere, and separately the interactions of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and its eddies. Professor Bindoff has served on 12 international committees, six of which are still current, invited speaker at ten conferences and workshops, co-chaired 2 workshops and was guest editor on two special volumes of Deep Sea Research, and convened Oceans session of the Climate Change Congress, Copenhagen March 2009.

Professor Patrick De Deckker, AM

BA, MSc (Hons) Macquarie, PhD, DSc (Adelaide)
Verco Medal [Royal Society of SA], Australian Limnological Society Medal, Christoffel Plantin Award [Belgium]
Web page

I am a micropalaeontologist interested in past and recent climate changes, both on land and at sea. I use micro-organisms and their chemical composition as proxies for past environmental reconstructions. I also started a project aiming at fingerprinting airborne dust in the Australian region, and eventually we will investigate the role of dust in the marine realm through time. My recent achievements aimed at linking terrestrial and marine environmental reconstructions, especially for the Holocene [the last 12,000 years]. My work is multidisciplinary in nature. I have led 7 oceanographic research cruises in the Australian region, and also was the co-founder of the University of the Sea educational program. I have published over 170 papers in refereed international journals and have edited/co-edited 7 volumes.

Professor Chris Reason, University of Cape Town

BSc(Hons) Cape Town; MPhil City; MSc PhD British Columbia
Web page

Interests: Southern Hemisphere climate variability, southern African rainfall variability, mesoscale and coastal meteorology, tropical meteorology and oceanography, severe weather, ocean-atmosphere interactions, Indian and South Atlantic Oceans, Southern Ocean, ocean and atmospheric modelling

Research Programme Affiliations: CLIVAR - Variability in African Climate system; CLIVAR - Atlantic Ocean Panel; GOOS / CLIVAR - Indian Oceanl Panel; BCLME; ARGO - Geophysical reseach letters, Internation Journal of Climatology

Professor Michael Reeder, Monash University

Web page

Michael currently holds the Chair in Meteorology in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University.

After completing a PhD in Applied Mathematics at Monash University, Michael held postdoctoral positions the University of Munich (Germany) and the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (Maryland), after which he returned Monash University as a member of staff. While at Monash University he has held long-term visiting positions at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Colorado), the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at the State University of New York at Albany (New York) and the University of Reading (UK). The topics on which Michael has published include fronts and extra-tropical cyclones, baroclinic instability, tropical cyclones, gravity waves, solitary waves, boundary layers, orographic effects, tropical convection and bushfires. Currently his research group comprises 2 postdoctoral fellows, a research assistant and 7 graduate students. Michael has supervised or co-supervised 30 graduate students and 19 honours students. He is a past member of the ARC College of Experts, a past President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, and has been a Chief Investigator in 10 major field experiments since 1991. Michael won the Loewe Prize (Royal Meteorological Society, Australian Branch).

Professor Jean Palutikof, Griffith University

Director, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), Griffith University.
Web page

Prof. Jean Palutikof is Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University. She took up the role in October 2008, having previously managed the production of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report for Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), while based at the UK Met Office.

Prior to joining the Met Office, she was a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences, and Director of the Climatic Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia, UK, where she worked from 1979 to 2004, and a Lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Nairobi, Kenya, from 1974 to 1979.

Her research interests focus on climate change impacts, and the application of climatic data to economic and planning issues. She specialises in the study of changes in extreme events and their impacts, especially windstorm. She was a Lead Author for Working Group II of the IPCC Second and Third Assessment Reports. She has authored more than 200 papers, articles and reports on the topic of climate change and climate variability. Her proudest moment to date was attending the ceremony in 2007 at which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Professor Steven Sherwood, Physical Meteorology and Atmospheric Climate Dynamics University of NSW

Web page

Prof. Steven Sherwood received his Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1995. He joined UNSW in January of this year, coming off previous positions as a researcher at NASA and professor at Yale University where he taught courses on atmospheric physics and global warming. His expertise is in the behaviour of atmospheric storms, clouds and humidity, and the relationship of these to climate. He has also done extensive work on climate observation. He has authored several dozen peer-reviewed publications, and has served as a co-author and/or reviewer on several government reports including the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and the first report of the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) in 2006.