Professor Tony Haymet FTSE is Australia’s Chief Scientist. He has researched and taught for many years in Australia and in the United States, including as Established Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Sydney. From 2002 to 2006, Prof Haymet was chief of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, based in Hobart, Tasmania. From 2006 to 2012, he was Vice-Chancellor, Director and Distinguished Professor of Oceanography, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. In 2010, Prof Haymet and a colleague at the Scripps Institution established MRV Systems LLC, a company that manufactures ocean robots. The autonomous drones take chemical and physical measurements across the world’s oceans. Prof Haymet was a board member and Chair of the Antarctic Science Foundation (2020-2025), a board member of Worldfish, based in Penang (2017-2020), and served on the Oceans Council of the World Economic Forum (WEF) including as Chair. He was Director, Oceans, at the Minderoo Foundation where he established a philanthropic research program (2020). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI).

Matt Kean was appointed as Chair of the authority on 5 August 2024 for a term of 5 years. He was previously the Member for Hornsby in the NSW Parliament from 2011 until 2 August 2024. Matt was most recently the NSW Shadow Minister for Health. He was Deputy Leader of the NSW Liberal party from August 2022 until March 2023. Throughout his 13-year political career, Matt also
held ministries of Innovation and Better Regulation, Treasury, Energy and Environment. As Treasurer and Energy Minister of NSW, Matt championed climate action that is in the best interests
of households and businesses. In 2020, he delivered the Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap: A 20-year plan for NSW’s energy infrastructure. The roadmap spurs private investment in renewable
energy while reducing emissions and power bills for the people of NSW. Matt commenced in the role of Director, Regulatory Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at Wollemi Capital on 15 August 2024. Matt studied a Bachelor of Business at the University of Technology Sydney and is a Chartered Accountant by profession.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg AC is a Professor of Marine Science at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He has a BSc (honors) from the University of Sydney and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Ove’s research focuses on the biology of coral reefs, particularly the impacts of ocean warming and acidification. In addition to publishing over 400 publications, Ove leads a research group and has started innovative education programs such as Stanford Australia and more recently – Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs at UQ. He was the Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) for the ‘Oceans’ chapter for the IPCC fifth assessment report and the Impacts Chapter of the IPCC Special Report for the implications of 1.5oC for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was awarded the Eureka Prize for his scientific research in 1999 and an ARC Laureate (2013-2019) after finishing his term as Smart State Premier’s Fellow (2008–13). He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2013. In June 2025, Ove was one of just 14 people appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC). His appointment recognised eminent service to marine science, particularly the research, conservation and management of coral reef ecosystems, and to tertiary education.

Associate Professor Alex Sen Gupta is giving this year’s RH Clarke Lecture. Alex is a research scientist and lecturer at the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) and the Centre For Marine Science and Innovation (CMSI) at the university of New South Wales (UNSW). He is also a Chief Investigator/program leader for the ARC Australian Centre of Excellence for Antarctic Science (ACEAS) and an Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX). His work revolves around the role of the ocean in the climate system, how the ocean influences regional climate and what global climate models tell us about the future of the ocean. His interests include marine heatwaves, factors affecting high latitude Southern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation, the impacts of climate variability on regional rainfall, modelling the movement of tropical tuna, climate model biases, and how temperature variability affect marine species.

Dr Edward Doddridge is the Meyers Medal winner for 2024. Edward is a prize-winning jam maker and DECRA Fellow in Physical Oceanography at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Tasmania. His research uses numerical models, theory, and observations to improve our understanding of the ocean around Antarctica and the rapid changes we are currently witnessing. He studied Maths and Physics as an undergraduate at the University of Tasmania and obtained his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He subsequently worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to Tasmania.

Associate Professor Robyn Schofield graduated with a BSc(Hons) 1st Class in Chemistry from Otago University then conducted her PhD in Environmental Science through Auckland University working at NIWA’s Lauder research site in New Zealand. She worked as a CIRES fellow in the Chemical Sciences Division at NOAA in Boulder, Colorado and a Humboldt and Marie Curie Fellow at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Ocean research in Potsdam, Germany. She has worked at the University of Melbourne since 2011 and since 2021 is the A/Dean of Environment and Sustainability in the Faculty of Science. She is an expert across several areas of environmental science from atmospheric chemistry to air quality and climate science. She has expertise in atmospheric spectroscopy, radiative transfer, profile retrievals of trace-gas species and coupled chemistry-climate modelling.

Dr Eunice Lo investigates how extreme weather and climate change affect human health at Bristol University. Eunice is interested in the impacts of climate variability and change on human health. In the past few years, she has been researching the changes in extreme weather events such as heatwaves and cold spells, and how these changes translate to negative health outcomes including illnesses and deaths. The goal of my research is to provide new and useful information for policymakers to make decisions about climate adaptation and mitigation, so that fewer people will be adversely affected by climate change. To this end, I work with national organisations such as the Met Office and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), as well as local authorities. I am also a contributing author to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group I, on Chapter 3: Human Influence on the Climate System. She did a PhD in Atmosphere, Oceans and Climate at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology which used climate change detection and attribution techniques to explore how detectable temperature changes associated with injecting sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere would be, if deployed, amid greenhouse gas and other external forcing and internal variability.

Professor Andreas Prein is the leader of the High-Resolution Weather and Climate Modeling group. His work involves research and teaching on dynamically modeling the weather and climate system. Specifically, he focuses on gaining a better understanding of the physical processes that contribute to changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme events in a warming climate. This encompasses changes across all scales of motion, from synoptic-scales to microscales. Andreas’s primary interest lies in regional and local-scale extreme events. He actively participate in various international activities within the World Climate Research Program and frequently collaborate with stakeholders and end-users to improve the practical application of his research.

Professor Lisa Alexander is a Professor at UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre and a Chief Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather. She holds a BSc and MSc in Applied Maths and Computational Science from Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland and a PhD in Climate Science from Monash University. Lisa has spent most of her career trying to understand the variability and driving mechanisms of climate extremes. Her primary work aims to improve our understanding of observed changes using multiple research tools ranging from station observations to climate model output. Much of her work has been focused on the creation of high quality global datasets and their comparison with state of the art climate models. Lisa currently sits on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Program.

Chrissy Grant is an Aboriginal (Kuku Yalanji from the Jalun-Warra clan) and Torres Strait Islander (Mualgal from Kubin on Moa Island) Elder with more than 40 years of work experience at the national and international level in cultural and natural resource management, heritage management, conservation. She worked as Director of Indigenous Heritage in the Australian Heritage Commission and then in the Department of Environment and Heritage at the federal level, implementing the new Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.  She works extensively with Indigenous peoples across the Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef as traditionally the adjoining world heritage properties are situated over her traditional land and sea. She is currently a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and ICOMOS Australia, the Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on World Heritage, the Co-Chair of the Advisory Committee for International Indigenous Repatriation of Human Remains, the Deputy Co-Chair of the Australian World Heritage Advisory Committee and the first Indigenous Chair appointed to Wet Tropics Management Authority Board. She has participated in international negotiations related to the Convention of Biological Diversity, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Committee and other related bodies. She is also member of a number of international committees to advance and improve the Indigenous peoples’ rights in protected areas and cultural heritage. She is the author of numerous publications on indigenous rights, indigenous-led management of protected areas and world heritage.

Dr Michael Grose is a climate researcher at CSIRO, and his research focuses on our changing climate. He works with climate modelling, observations to research how the climate is changing, attributing causes, and making projections of the future. He has contributed to the Australian State of the Climate reports and was a Lead Author on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.