Proposed Keynote and Invited Speakers

The 5th Western Australian State Coastal Conference
7–9 October 2009 · Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle, Western Australia

Dr Stephen Leatherman (USA)

Biography

Dr Leatherman is the Chair Professor and Director at the International Hurricane Research Centre, Florida International University. His major research focus is storm impacts on coastal areas.
He served for many years on the National Academy of Science Post-Storm Disaster Field Team that was dispatched from Washington, DC, to survey hurricane damage and thus has considerable first-hand experience with these disasters. Dr Leatherman has authored or edited 15 books and authored more than 200 refereed journal articles and technical reports. He has provided expert testimony to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives committees regarding ten occasions on important science policy issues, especially coastal storm impacts and federal response. Dr Leatherman has given hundreds of invited talks at professional conferences and public workshops—his research has also been widely reported on television programs and in newspapers.

Dr Leatherman is in demand across America as his alter ego ‘Dr Beach’.

Professor Rodger Tomlinson (Queensland)

Biography

Professor Tomlinson is a member of the Gold Coast City Council, a Professor of Coastal Management, Director of Griffith Centre for Coastal Management, Coastal Program Leader of Griffith Climate Response, Program Co-ordinator in the area of Strategic Investment in Climate Change Adaptation.

Professor Tomlinson’s research expertise includes: Inner-shelf/coastal zone flows, in particular mass transport near river entrances, tidal inlets, and marine vortices, effluent dispersal in estuarine and marine waters, coastal zone management—particularly the impact of coastal developments on hydrodynamic and sedimentary processes, open coast beach characteristics and urban catchment management.

Dr Kingsley Dixon (Western Australia)

Biography

Dr Dixon’s interests include plant form and function as they relate to natural systems and species. Core activities include conservation of rare and threatened species; restoration of degraded landscapes; horticultural and agricultural development of indigenous Australian plants. Underpinning these core areas are specialist activities in seed science, germplasm conservation, orchid biology and conservation, specialist systems of nutrition (including mycorrhiza, cluster root and carnivory), biotechnology (in vitro systems) and genetics. Recent activities extend to the biology, genetic diversity and restoration of seagrasses (Posidonia) in Western Australia.

Dr Simon Thrush (New Zealand)

Biography

Dr Thrush is the Science Leader for Coastal Ecosystems research and Principal Scientist in Benthic Ecology at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand. He has over 20 years of experience in the development and implementation of strategic research to influence resource management and improved societal valuation of marine ecosystems. His research interests include coastal and estuarine marine ecology; scale dependent processes in heterogeneous environments; the influence of disturbance events on populations and communities and the implications for recovery and resilience; ecological impact assessment, particularly of diffuse source and/or broad-scale effects; the design and implementation of ecological monitoring programmes; the environmental effects of fishing; organism–sediment interactions; organism–hydrodynamic interactions; functional biodiversity and biocomplexity. He has contributed to over 150 publications in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and 100 consultancy reports. He is currently on an EU fellowship working at the University of Genoa (Italy) on a project concerning the biodiversity, connectivity and resilience of Ligurian coastal communities.

Professor Richard Weller (Western Australia)

Biography

Richard Weller is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Western Australia (UWA) where he is renowned for combining teaching, research and practice in a dynamic student-centered environment. Since the program’s inception in 1993/4 Professor Weller has spearheaded a design culture in the UWA program. He received an excellence in teaching award from the UWA in 2003.

In over 20 years of design practice Professor Weller has received a consistent stream of international, design competition awards. His work has been widely exhibited including in a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (1998) and at the Venice Biennale (2004). Professor Weller has published over 50 papers and given over 80 invited presentations on contemporary urban design and landscape architecture. His work has been published as a monograph by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2005.

Throughout his career Professor Weller has worked selectively on significant and often large scale urban projects around the world. His most important built work is the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, opened by the Prime Minister of Australia in 2001. Professor Weller has recently completed a masterplan for a suburb in Perth, Western Australia for 40,000 people – touted as one of Australia’s most innovative suburban developments and he was also a leading member of the design team for the $3 billion redevelopment of Perth city foreshore. In addition to these high profile projects his most recent research, funded by the Australian Research Council, concerned the creation of alternative urban growth scenarios for the city of Perth by the year 2050 and is the subject of his latest book, ‘Boomtown 2050’.

Professor Weller consults as both a designer and a reviewer of major projects.

For more information on these and other local and national speakers that have been approached to present at the Conference, please visit this website for regular updates.

Conference Secretariat

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