FENNER CONFERENCE ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Introduction
Professor Kurt Lambeck

Kurt Lambeck is Distinguished Professor of Geophysics at the Australian National University. His research interests range through the disciplines of geophysics, geodesy and geology with a focus on the deformations of the Earth on intermediate and long time scales and on the interactions between surface processes and the solid earth. Past research areas have included the determination of the Earth's gravity field from satellite tracking data, the tidal deformations and rotational motion of the Earth, the evolution of the Earth-Moon orbital system, lithospheric and crustal deformation processes. His recent work has focused on aspects of sea level change and the history of the Earth's ice sheets during past glacial cycles, including field and laboratory work and numerical modelling.

Professor Lambeck has been at the Australian National University since 1977, including ten years as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences. He is currently also strategic science advisor to National Geospatial Reference System of Geoscience Australia. He was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1984 and to the Royal Society in 1994. He is a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1994), Academia Europaea (1999), and the Académie des Sciences, Institut de France (2005). He has received a number of prestigious international prizes and awards.

I am going to invite Professor Frank Fenner to welcome you to the 2007 Fenner Conference on the Environment. Frank has, for very many years, been committed to bringing science, including social science, to solving issues relating to the environment. Following a stellar career in virology, he was appointed the foundation Director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, and his contributions to that institution have very recently been recognised by the establishment of the Fenner School of Environment and Society. We congratulate you, Frank, on this recognition, and on the ceaseless contributions that you have made to the welfare of society.

I invite you to address us.