Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

Professor, University of Queensland, The University of Queensland
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (BScHons., Sydney; PhD., UCLA) is founder and inaugural Director of the Global Change Institute and Professor of Marine Science and Deputy Director of the Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies based at University of Queensland. He was made an ARC Laureate Fellow and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2013. Over the past 10 years he was Founding Director of the Global Change Institute and is Deputy Director of the Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies (www.coralcoe.org.au, since 2006) and Affiliated Professor in Tropical Marine Biology at the University of Copenhagen (2016-present). Ove’s research focuses on the impacts of global change on marine ecosystems and is one of the most cited authors on climate change. In addition to pursuing scientific discovery, Ove has had a 20-year history in leading research organisations such as the Centre for Marine Studies (including 3 major research stations over 2000-2009) and the Global Change Institute, both at the University of Queensland. He has also been a dedicated communicator of the threat posed by ocean warming and acidification to marine ecosystems, being one of the first scientists to identify the serious threat posed by climate change for coral reefs in a landmark paper published in 1999 (Mar.Freshwater Res 50:839-866), which predicted the loss of coral reefs by 2050. Since that time, Ove led global discussions and action on the science and solutions to rapid climate change via high profile international roles such as the Coordinating Lead Author for the ‘Oceans’ chapter for the Fifth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Coordinating Lead Author on the Impacts chapter of the IPCC Special report on 1.5oC. In addition to this work, Ove conceived and led the scientific XL-Catlin Seaview Survey (details here) which has surveyed over 1000 km of coral reefs across 25 countries (details here) and which captured and analysed over 1 million survey images of coral reefs. These images and data are available to the scientific community and others via an online database (https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:314984).

Scientific papers published by Ove cover significant contributions to the physiology, ecology, environmental politics, and climate change. Some of Ove’s most significant scientific contributions have been recognised by leading journals such as Science and Nature (Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno 2010; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2019a,b), scores of invited talks and plenaries over the past 20 years, plus his appointment as significant international roles e.g. Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 30 (“The Oceans”) for the 5th Assessment Report, as well as Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 3 (Impacts) on the special report on the implications of 1.5oC (for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC).

Ove is one of the most cited Australian science authors (and 3rd internationally of 53,136 authors) on “climate change” by Thomson-Reuter’s ISI Web of Science (details here) in 2009. This represents a group of less than 0.5% of all published scientific researchers in the world. This has been updated recently with Ove being a member of the top 0.01% most productive scientists globally (Ioannidis et al. 2019) PLoS biology, 17(8), p.e3000384.). Ove received numerous awards from Thomson Reuters (e.g. Citation Award Winner in Ecology Thomson Reuters Citation & Innovation Award in 2012). Ove’s H-index is 80 (Clarivate Analytics, Jan 2020) or 105 (Google Scholar) and he have received several awards from Thomson-Reuters and now Clarivate Analytics (see above). He has been awarded a Eureka Prize for his scientific research as well as a QLD Premier’s fellowship, and later ARC Laureate Fellow. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 2013. He received the Prince Albert II 2014 Award for Climate Change, and the 2016 International Award from the Banksia Foundation. He has been recognised as a Highly Cited Researcher in 2001, 2014, 2018 and 2019 (top 1% of his field) and was listed among the 100 most influential people in Climate Policy globally (List available at Apolitical.