Professor Hugh Possingham is a conservation scientist and mathematician who has held positions in the university, public and not-for profit sectors. He is a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and was the Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy (2016 to 2020) and Queensland Chief Scientist (2020 to 2022).
His most significant contribution to conservation was the co-development of Marxan, software first used to rezone the Great Barrier Reef, and now used in almost every country in the world to inform the expansion of marine and terrestrial protected area systems.
