Our people

Director

Michelle is a world-recognised and highly cited plant ecologist, working in the applied fields of urban greenspace, plant conservation, invasive plants, vegetation responses to climate change, and nature-repair. She leads the Which Plant Where project in collaboration with Hort Innovation, as well as various urban greening research projects in collaboration with Sydney Water and the Botanic Gardens of Sydney. Michelle is a member of the Biodiversity Council Australia, and the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Advisory Panel.

Deputy Director

Honorary Professor Andrew Parker began his career as an artist and a scientist driven to understand the role of colour in the natural world. As a PhD student at Macquarie University in the 1990s, working in partnership with the Australian Museum, he examined tiny marine animals famous for their nocturnal bioluminescent light displays, and discovered a new type of ‘structural’ colour generated by microscopic structures rather than pigments. This was the beginning of Professor Parker’s distinguished career in biomimetics - the science of drawing inspiration from nature to improve design, systems, and manufacturing.

Professor Parker’s career continued at Oxford University, where his team studied structural colour in beetles from the Namib desert, butterflies, and metallic-coloured beetles. This research has led to environmentally-sustainable, waste-free innovations in air conditioning systems, computer circuits, and solar panel manufacturing.