Prof Peter G Strutton

Biography

Professor Peter Strutton received his Bachelor’s degree with Honours in Marine Science from Flinders University of South Australia, in 1993, and went on to complete his PhD in Marine Science in 1998. He then left Australia to take up a Postdoctoral Researcher position with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California -- a post he held until 2002. From 2002 to 2004 he was an Assistant Professor with the State University of New York’s Marine Sciences Research Centre, and from 2004 to 2010 he was Assistant, then Associate Professor at Oregon State University’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. In 2010 Prof Strutton returned to Australia on an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship and since then has been Associate Professor then Professor at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania. Prof Strutton’s research focuses on biological oceanography and his standing as an Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientist is recognised internationally. He has considerable expertise on how modes of variability – such as El Niño and internal ocean waves – affect nutrients in the ocean, biological productivity and carbon cycling. In the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Prof Strutton contributes to the Ocean Extremes research program. He is contributing to projects in the area of ocean variability – physical, biological and chemical. He concentrates on the drivers of observed changes in biogeochemical cycles, including oxygen, carbon and nutrients, with a recent and continuing focus on eddies. Prof Strutton is an experienced supervisor and mentor of early career researchers. He currently oversees two postdoctoral researchers and several PhD and honours students. He has an extensive publication record that spans work on Antarctica to the tropical Pacific and the Labrador Sea. He is a past editor for the journal Geophysical Research Letters and a former leader of the Bluewater and Climate Node for Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System. Prof Strutton has also served on the scientific steering committee for the Tropical Pacific Observing System (tropicalpacific.org). He is currently the head of the Oceans and Cryosphere Centre at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at UTAS.