Steven L. Chown is Professor of Biological Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and Director of Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future, an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative.
His research mainly concerns biodiversity variation through space and time, and the conservation implications of environmental change, including the means to mitigate it. He co-developed the field of macrophysiology – the investigation of large-scale patterns in and processes underlying physiological variation and their ecological implications. He has worked in Australia, Africa, the Pacific, the UK, and in the broader Antarctic region, where he has over 30 years of field experience.
Owing to his interest in the science-policy interface, for many years he represented the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), of which he was also President (2016-2021), at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, providing scientific advice on a broad range of environmental and science policy matters.
He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his science and policy work in the Antarctic, he has received the South African Antarctic Gold Medal, the inaugural Tinker-Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica, the SCAR Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research, and the French Republic’s Medal of the 30th Anniversary of the Madrid Protocol.
Monash University
