Gary Wilson

Change Agent, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Explorer, Scientist

Professor Wilson was appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor Research. Professor Wilson has held a number of national- and international-level strategic research and academic appointments. Prior to the University of Waikato, he was Chief Scientist and General Manager Research Strategy and Partnerships at GNS Science. He also previously held the role of Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Antarctic Programme and academic appointments at the University of Otago, the University of Oxford, and The Ohio State University. Professor Wilson’s research is highly collaborative and involved working with experts in economics, sociology, mātauranga Māori, and politics to advance our understanding of earth’s climate system and carbon cycle and generating a wider, science based and mode effective response to that. Current research programmes include international research investigating the changing carbon emission from warming frozen ground in Antarctica and the science and economics of changing carbon burial in New Zealand fiords. Professor Wilson also holds a number of Governance roles. He is a Trustee of the Sir Peter Blake Trust, Chair of the Royal Society Te Apārangi National Committee on Antarctic Sciences and National Delegate to the International Science Council Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and Chair of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Programme (ICDP). In 2021, he was awarded the Thomson Medal by the Royal Society Te Apārangi for his leadership in developing New Zealand’s international profile in Antarctic Research.

Driving the knowledge economy and impact from research through connecting research in physical sciences, engineering and health sciences through social science research with the societies that need the new knowledge to improve societal economic and environmental outcomes

The challenge of climate change is the level of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere - industrial emissions is only one part of that - maintaining Earth's natural carbon sinks is the other. Not only are we not doing so well on curtailing emissions but understanding and protecting the sinks is mostly out of mind.

Antarctica, Carbon Cycle, Climate Change, International Collaboration, Southern Ocean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnKB7TNcmGI

Driving scientific exploration in remote locations and working off the grid every year including many months living out of tents in subzero temperatures.