AUTHORS: Geoff Garrett
Geoff Garrett…
was Queensland Chief Scientist from 2011 to 2016, having completed eight years as Chief Executive of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), one of the world’s largest and most diverse national research organisations. Before joining CSIRO, Geoff led South Africa’s national science agency, the CSIR, as President and Chief Executive from 1995, following five years as Executive Vice President: Operations. He was named South Africa’s ‘Boss of the Year’ in 1998, and, in that same year, ‘Engineer of the Year’ by the South African Society of Professional Engineers. Educated in the United Kingdom, Geoff is a graduate of Cambridge University, where he completed a doctorate in metallurgy, and laboured hard on the cricket field under his captain, Graeme Davies. He was also a university boxing blue. He then took up a lecturing position at the University of Cape Town, and, prior to joining the CSIR, was Professor and Head of Department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He held visiting positions at Brown University (RI, USA), and at Oxford and Sheffield Universities in the UK. His research interests centred around the fracture and fatigue behaviour of engineering materials. Currently he lectures in leadership and change management and provides coaching support in these areas to academics and to senior officers of the Australian Public Service. He is also presently Deputy Chair of the National Youth Science Forum and the Patron of the Australian Citizen Science Association. Geoff is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, the Royal Society of South Africa and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and served on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council in Australia for eight years. He was also, for six years, Chairman of ANZIC, the Australia-New Zealand Consortium – comprising 20 collaborating institutions – of the major 23-country International Ocean Discovery Program, IODP. A recipient of the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society through science, Geoff was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of Australia’s 2008 ‘True Leaders’. In June 2008 he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. He is married to Janet, and they have four sons, Ben, Matt, David and Luke. His interests include fishing, tennis and table tennis, and his five (so far!) grandchildren Liam, Aran, Evie, Frankie and Reuben. |
|
|
|