Download Laureate 2016 Bios*Professor Philip Boyd

Professor Philip Boyd
Current Organisation
Administering Organisation
Discipline Area
University of Tasmania
University of Tasmania
Biological Sciences and Biotechnology
Fellowship project summary:
Geoengineering the Southern Ocean? A transdisciplinary assessment (FL160100131)
The project aims to comprehensively evaluate the feasibility of offsetting climate change by using
geoengineering to boost carbon dioxide removal by Southern Ocean microbes. With existing polar
datasets as a platform, the project would combine experiments and modelling to quantify carbon
dioxide removal and critically assess the economic feasibility and side effects of geoengineering.
Anticipated outcomes include a framework for governance of future research and informed
national/international policy on using geoengineering to mitigate climate change.
Australian Research Council funding: $2,496,651
About Professor Boyd
Professor Philip Boyd commenced his career as a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth Marine
Laboratory (UK) where he was a part of the seminal Joint Global Ocean Flux Study. This led to a
four-year postdoctoral position at the School of Oceanography (University of British Columbia,
Canada), followed by an appointment as a Phytoplankton Ecologist with the National Institute of
Water and Atmosphere (NIWA, New Zealand). In New Zealand, he helped to establish the NIWA
Centre for Chemical and Physical Oceanography—based at the Chemistry Department, University of
Otago, Dunedin. In 2013, he took up his current appointment at the, University of Tasmania where he
is Professor of Marine Biogeochemistry at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies.
Professor Boyd’s in-depth research interests range from ecology to biogeochemistry and include the
joint development of decision support tools (such as for climate change, geoengineering) with
economists and policy analysts. He has helped to develop (with these collaborators) and structure
interactive workshops, for a range of policy makers, to introduce and employ the decision-making
tools to assist with implementation of uptake of this science.
Find out more about Professor Boyd and his research by visiting his profile page on the University of
Tasmania website.
For further information about this funding scheme please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships
scheme page on the ARC website.