Professor Hugh Possingham FAA is an eminent Australian scientist and mathematician. His academic interests are in species conservation research, operations research, and ecological systems research. More specifically his research focus has been to secure the knowledge that will assure the maintenance of the world’s biological diversity through: efficient nature reserve design, habitat reconstruction, monitoring, optimal management of populations for conservation, cost-effective conservation actions for threatened species, pest control and population harvesting, survey methods for detecting bird decline, bird conservation ecology, environmental accounting and metapopulation dynamics.

Professor Possingham is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. He currently directs two national research centres, including an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. Born and educated in South Australia, he received his D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1987 and has over 720 refereed research papers with which he is associated. His research projects are in the field of decision theory in conservation biology. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society, and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.