Specialisations

• Policy decisions influencing the use of energy, science and technology
• Energy use in industrialised countries
• Large-scale environmental issues and sustainable development.

Professor Ian Lowe (BSc, NSW; DPhil, York (UK) is an emeritus professor in the School of Science at Griffith University, an adjunct professor at two Australian universities and is the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Professor Lowe's  principal research interests are in policy decisions influencing the use of energy, science and technology; energy use in industrialised countries; large-scale environmental issues and sustainable development. Professor Lowe has been appointed to the Australian National Commission for UNESCO and is a consultant to the CSIRO Division of Sustainable Ecosystems.

In 1988 he was Director of the Commission for the Future, and was named Australian Humanist of the Year. He chaired an Australian government advisory council that produced the first national report on the state of the environment in 1996, and delivered the ABC Boyer Lectures in 1991. Professor Lowe was one of fifteen Queenslanders to receive a Premier's Millennium Award for Excellence for his contribution to science, and, in the same year received the Prime Minister's Environmental Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement.

Professor Lowe was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2001 for services to science and technology and for contributing to public understanding of environmental issues.  He was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2002 for contributions to environmental science and won the Eureka Prize for the promotion of science.