Board Member & Scientific Advisory Committee Chair

Professor Ian Woodrow is head of the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at The University of Melbourne, a role that involves research, teaching, leadership of a large academic department, and engagement with a variety of external organisations.

Ian received his science degree from The University of Melbourne, and then gained a scholarship to complete a PhD in the UK at the University of Sheffield. He remained in Europe for several more years, holding post-doctoral research positions at the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Münster in Germany, before returning to Australia as an Australian Research Council (ARC) Queen Elizabeth II Fellow at the Australian National University. Following completion of the fellowship, Ian was offered a Harkness Fellowship by the Commonwealth Fund of New York, which supported his research position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University (USA). He held this position for three years before returning to Australia as a lecturer at the James Cook University in Townsville. In the late 1990s, Ian won an ARC Senior Research Fellowship, which took him back to the School of Botany at The University of Melbourne. He became head of the School of Botany in 2011, a position that he held for some five years.

In addition to his role as Head of School, Ian is the leader of the Plant Physiology Research Group, which focusses on research into biologically active compounds in Australian native plants. He has published widely on plant biochemistry and is currently leading projects on the utilisation of eucalypts for producing valuable natural products.