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Professorial appointments

Professor of Hydrology

This Chair is jointly funded by Charles Sturt University (CSU) and CSIRO Land and Water (CLW) and is based at the Wagga Wagga campus of CSU. Wagga Wagga is situated on the Murrumbidgee River in a major catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Professor Shahbaz Khan . Prof. Khan has a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Birmingham, UK, specialising in groundwater hydrology and mathematical modelling, a graduate diploma in Applied GIS and Remote Sensing, CSU, a graduate certificate in IT and is currently studying for a Masters of International Environmental Law at Macquarie University. He took up the position on 5 July 2004.

The United Nations has ranked the lower reaches of the Murrumbidgee as a global reference basin. Prof. Khan spent five years developing the management program that secured the UN award. he is already using research methods from the Murrumbidgee project in catchments in the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China and the Indus Basin in Pakistan, to assist farmers save water and address salinity problems. There is strong interest in his work from South Africa and Mozambique.

Professor of Water Policy

Dr Kathleen Bowmer was appointed as Professor of Water Policy at CSU, Wagga Wagga in January 2004. Her position is jointly funded by CSU and CSIRO Land and Water (CLW) for three years.

Prof. Bowmer graduated from the University of Nottingham in agricultural sciences and soil chemistry and has published widely in aquatic ecology, water quality, pesticide chemistry and catchment governance. She became a Chief Research Scientist while employed in CSIRO Division of Irrigation Research at Griffith, New South Wales, became Deputy Chief of CSIRO Division of Water Resources (1989-1996), Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), at Charles Sturt University (1996-2001) and a Business Director of CSIRO Land and Water (2001-2004). Kath is a consultant to governments and industry, has supervised ten research higher degrees and examined research theses for seven Universities. She took up a personal Chair in Water Policy at Charles Sturt University in January 2004.

Kath was invited to prepare material for the Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Council (1995-6); and was a member of the Australian Research Council Earth Sciences Panel (1999-2001), chairing the panel for two years. She chaired the Murrumbidgee River Management Committee (1998-2003) which developed the Murrumbidgee Water Sharing Plan that was gazetted in December 2002. She is a board member of the CRC for Sustainable Rice production, the CRC for Freshwater Ecology, the Murray Darling Freshwater Research Centre, and the National Rivers Consortium of Land & Water Australia. She is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and was awarded the Pol Eureka Prize for Environmental Research in 1995.

Professor of Integrated Environmental Management

Allan Curtis took up the position of Professor of Integrated Environmental Management in Albury on 1 June 2004. Prof. Curtis is currently (2002-2004) the Social Sciences Program (SSP) Leader in the Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS). BRS is the scientific bureau of the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry – Australia. Allan’s previously worked at CSU(1992-2002) where his most recent appointment was as a Key Researcher and the Associate Director of the Johnstone Centre. Allan also made important contributions to post-graduate and undergraduate teaching in the School of Environmental and Information Sciences at Albury. A major initiative was the development of a keystone undergraduate subject on Catchment Management.

Allan’s research examines aspects of rural development, sustainable agriculture and the conservation of biodiversity on private land. He has specific expertise in sustaining watershed organisations, understanding rural landholder adoption, the policy and institutional arrangements supporting catchment management and in the evaluation of natural resource management programs. Recent experience has also included work exploring adaptive management, triple bottom line reporting, public perceptions of risk in quarantine and aquaculture, and assessments of the socio-economic impact of changes in land use (forestry) and resource access (fishing, irrigation water). Allan’s research draws on theory across the fields of program evaluation, community engagement, capacity building, communications, volunteer management, extension and community education, and rural development.

Adjunct appointments

Professor John Williams

Prof. John Williams was raised on a grazing property on the southern tablelands of New South Wales, graduated from the University of Sydney, then conducted research in Canada, USA and the South Pacific, before joining CSIRO in Townsville, where he spent 16 years working on hydrology, salinity and soil erosion in the semi-arid tropics. He was appointed Deputy Chief of CSIRO Land and Water at its inception in 1997 and Chief in September 2001.

Prof. Williams has published extensively on the nature of agriculture as part of the natural ecosystem; was appointed by the New South Wales Premier in 1999 and 2001 as the auditor for the Sydney Water Supply Catchments; co-led the LWRRDC/CSIRO Program Redesign of Agriculture for the Australian Landscape; coordinated the CSIRO Multi-Divisional Program Dryland Farming Systems for Catchment Care ; represented CSIRO in the coordination of the National Dryland Salinity Program; prepared material for the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council on several occasions; and played an influential role in the National Land and Water Resources Audit. He is a member of the Wentworth Group, a group of eleven independent scientists who have influenced the national debate and contributed to new policies on water and landscape management.

Presently Prof. Williams is Chair of the Water Action Council for the Global Research Alliance which brings together strategic thinking on water resources management from nine of the world leading research organizations including CSIRO Australia, CSIR South Africa, CSIR India, Battelle, USA and Fraunhofer, Germany. He is a member of the governing board for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

Professor Mike Young

Prof. Young directs the Policy and Economic Research Unit in CSIRO Land and Water, based in Adelaide and Canberra and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. Prof. Young already holds an adjunct professorship with the UNE Centre for Ecological Economics and Water Policy Research. He specialises in the design, development and use of market mechanisms to manage natural resources and improve environmental outcomes.