Ian Wright

Ian has extensive research governance and executive leadership in Australia, New Zealand, and UK having been a Board Member of more than eight research entities, across geospatial, energy, aerospace, medical technologies and materials science research sectors, including two New Zealand Centres of Research Excellence. The more notable entities include NZ Synchrotron Group Limited; MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology; Geospatial Research Institute; Research Council UK (RCUK) Energy Programme Scientific Advisory Committee; UK NERC Science and Innovation Board; Christchurch City Aerospace and Future Transport Advisory Group, and Chair of the New Zealand National Energy Research Institute. His is currently a Board Member of FrontierSI – a social enterprise geospatial and emerging space company working across Australia and NZ. Many facets of his leadership are related to strategic direction, opportunity, and innovation and commercialisation.

Ian's personal marine geological research advances fundamental knowledge of important earth system processes, but also underpins maritime national interest and end-user impacts for tsunami hazard, climate change mitigation, and new offshore industry monitoring practice. His research aims to understand the drivers, process, and impact of active seafloor fluid emission systems (over persistent chronic and short-lived catastrophic time-scales), around four themes comprising: (1) the geological setting, effect, and interaction of silicic magma ejection and hydrothermal fluid emission in the deep ocean, (2) the physical mechanism and geochemical consequences of possible CO2 leakage from sub-seafloor carbon storage reservoirs (3), the mechanism and geochemical consequences of methane hydrate dissociation on the Artic shelf, and (4) the physical, acoustic, and biogeochemical sensing of the above using in situ and autonomous engineering technologies. This research, including extensive international collaboration and significant research leadership, has resulted in a suite of key papers in leading journals including Nature Geoscience, Nature Climate Change, Marine Geology, Earth Planet Science Letters, G3, J. Geophysical Research, Bull. Volcanology, Geochim.Cosmochim. Acta, and Intl. J. Greenhouse Gas Control. Ian has ~5500 citations and H-index of 46 (Google Scholar).