Changes in the frequency and/or severity of extreme climate events have the potential to have profound societal and ecological impacts. Associate Professor Lisa Alexander’s work primarily focuses on improving our understanding of observed changes in these events using multiple research tools ranging from station observations to climate model output.
Lisa is an internationally recognised expert on climate variability and extremes and has contributed significantly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. She was awarded the 2011 Priestley Medal by the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the 2013 Australian Academy of Science Dorothy Hill award, and the 2017/18 World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Commission for Climatology Outstanding Service award.
Lisa completed her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Applied Mathematics at Queens University in Northern Ireland in 1995 and 1998 respectively. She was a research scientist for the Met Office Hadley Centre in the Climate Variability Group from 1998 to 2006, spending her last year on secondment at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. She completed her PhD at Monash University in 2009, winning the Mollie Holman medal for best doctoral thesis. Since then she has been a senior researcher with the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW.
Links:
Personal website
UNSW Climate Change Research Centre
Articles on The Conversation
Mathematics for Planet Earth 