Penny van Oosterzee

Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University

Penny is Director of Biome5, a University Fellow at Charles Darwin University and Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University, and a partner in an ARC research project on cost-effective restoration for biodiversity and carbon outcomes. Her research focuses on ecosystems and climate change abatement. She is currently researching policy associated with the biodiversity and ecosystem services, restoration ecology, one health approaches and climate change.

Penny is also a science writer, with several national awards including two Eureka Science Prizes. One of these books "Where World Collide: The Wallace Line" is now available as an ebook. Her book, with Mike Morwood, titled "The Discovery of the Hobbit: The Scientific Breakthrough that Changed the Face of Human History" won the inaugural John Mulvaney Award for Archaeology in 2007. Her latest book "Cloud Land: The dramatic story of Australia's extraordinary rainforest people and country" was recently published by Allen & Unwin in 2023 and was shortlisted for the People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award 2023.

Experience

2012–present

Senior Research Adjunct , James Cook University
2012–present

University Fellow, Charles Darwin University
2005–2014

Director, Biome5

Education

2014

Charles Darwin University, PhD

Grants and Contracts

2009

Identifying cost-effective reforestation approaches for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration in the Australian wet tropics

Role:

Linkage Partner

Funding Source:

ARC

Honours

Eureka Science Awards 1991, 1997; Whitley Award fin Australian Zoological Literature; Whitley Award for Best Historical Zoology; Whitley Award in Science Literature 2007; John Mulvaney Award for Archaeology 2007;