David J Suggett Australian Marine Sciences Association 2022

David J Suggett

David Suggett is a marine biologist interested in understanding how environments and climate shape the form and functioning of coral reef ecosystems. A Professor in the Climate Change Cluster at UTS, David increasingly works alongside industry and tourism sectors to improve reef management tools and practices. Within the Climate Change Cluster, he leads the Future Reefs Program, where the research ranges from organism-scale molecular signatures to broad scale ecological interactions. The outcomes directly inform how corals grow and survive, how reefs will look and function into the future, and how to better preserve and re-build healthy reefs. He chairs the field-based propagation working group for the international Coral Restoration Consortium, comprised of scientists, managers, coral restoration practitioners and educators dedicated to enabling coral reef ecosystems to survive long term. He is also Vice President of the world’s oldest organization concerned with the study and conservation of coral reefs, the Australian Coral Reef Society. A major focus of his work continues to be unlocking how “active fluorescence” can be used to monitor and manage the health of oceans and reefs, and he currently co-leads a working group for the Scientific Committee for Ocean Research (SCOR) on this topic. Prior to joining UTS as an ARC Future Fellow, David was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and then lecturer in Marine Biogeochemistry (University of Essex, UK), working on reefs in Brazil, Seychelles, Indonesia, New Caledonia and the Red Sea.