Geoff Garrett

Geoff Garrett AO is the former Chief Scientist of the State of Queensland, Australia and led two of the world's major national research and development (R&D) organisations, CSIRO in Australia and CSIR in South Africa.

He currently lectures in leadership and change management and provides coaching support in these areas to academics and to senior officers of the Australian Public Service.

As Queensland's Chief Scientist (2011 - 2016) he was accountable for science policy, providing strategic guidance across a range of government departments, and was involved with or led a number of reviews and enquiries covering the science of floods, uranium mining, the bat-induced Hendra virus, underground coal gasification, health and biomedical research and water quality improvement in the Great Barrier Reef.

Formerly, from 2001 - 2008, Garrett was Chief Executive and member of the Board of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

In this capacity he also served on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council in Australia for eight years.

Before joining CSIRO, Garrett led South Africa’s national science agency, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), as President and Chief Executive, 1995 - 2000, following five years as Executive Vice President, Operations. He joined CSIR in 1986 to head up South Africa’s National Institute for Materials Research.

Before joining CSIR, from 1979 Garrett taught at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg as Professor of Physical and Fabrication Metallurgy and subsequently as Head of Department.

Prior to this, Garrett held a lecturing position at the University of Cape Town, from 1973, where he was also Warden at Leo Marquard Hall of Residence.

During his academic career, he held visiting positions at Brown University (RI, USA), and Oxford and Sheffield Universities (UK).

Educated in the United Kingdom, Garrett is a graduate of Cambridge University where he completed a doctorate in metallurgy. He was also a Cambridge Boxing Blue. His research interests centred around the fracture and fatigue behaviour of engineering materials.

During 2010, he was a Visiting Fellow in Innovation with the Australian National University (ANU). During that time he was also engaged with an International Review for the US National Science Foundation of the major 25 country International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), and in 2010 was appointed Chairman of ANZIC, the Australia New Zealand IODP Consortium comprising 20 collaborating institutions, a post he held through to December 2016.

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