Shawna Foo

• Senior Research Fellow, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

Dr Shawna Foo is a marine scientist interested in factors that increase the resilience of marine ecosystems to climate change. She is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and holds a prestigious Sydney Horizon Fellowship studying climate resilient corals on the Great Barrier Reef.

Dr Foo graduated in biology and anatomy and histology, and turned to marine science for her PhD on the adaptive potential of sea urchins to ocean warming and ocean acidification. She then completed an Endeavour Postdoctoral fellowship in Italy, using natural seawater carbon dioxide vents as windows into the future for studying the effects of ocean acidification.

She has worked at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, on a new model system, the anemone Aiptasia, then with the Centre for Global Discovery and Conservation Science at Arizona State University, integrating satellite-based coral mapping with benthic surveys to allow an upscaling of reef monitoring in the context of resilience and recovery of coral reefs after warming.

Most recently, Dr Foo was awarded a 2022 ARC DECRA Fellowship and a Westpac Research Fellowship to explore factors that can help to alleviate the impacts of global change on coral reefs and identify conservation strategies to help prevent the loss of these valuable ecosystems.

• 2022–2025 Senior Lecturer, The University of Sydney

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