Professor Michael Stoddart, Chairman of Council

Michael Stoddart joined the Australian Antarctic Division in December 1998 as Chief Scientist, after many years spent in the University system, both in Australia and the UK. He is a zoologist with interests in mammalian biology and olfactory physiology. He holds BSc, PhD and DSc degrees from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He is a Professorial Fellow in Zoology at Melbourne University and an Adjunct Professor in the University of Tasmania.

Following an idyllic stint as a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford University, Michael was appointed Lecturer in Zoology at King's College, University of London, and later promoted Reader. A year's leave-of-absence spent at Monash University in the late 1970s convinced him and his wife that Australia offered more than the UK and in 1985 he accepted the Chair of Zoology at the University of Tasmania. There he developed a strong research group investigating how native Australian mammals use scent and olfactory communication in their daily lives. He was the first elected Chair of the Academic Senate University, following its merger with TSIT in 1990. In 1994 he was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW.

He has been, variously, Chair of the Tasmanian Forest Research Council; Vice-Chair of the Royal Society of Tasmania; President of the Australian Mammal Society; President of the Section of Mammalogy, International Union of Biological Sciences; Chair of the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee; and is currently Australian Focal-Point to the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research.

He has published over 100 research papers on mammalian ecology, eco-physiology and evolutionary biology. He has written three books, all on aspects of olfactory communication in animals. His most recent - The Scented Ape - the Biology and Culture of Human Olfaction (CUP) - is translated into Spanish and Italian.