معرفی
Professor Susan Bengtson Nash is a leading polar scientist and Professor at Griffith University's School of Environment and Science - Environment and Marine. She serves as Development Lead for the Antarctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AnMAP), a collaborative initiative between SCAR, AMAP, UNESCO, and Griffith University. Her research focuses on tracking synthetic chemicals in Antarctica, their environmental behavior in a warming climate, and impacts on ecosystems. She curates the Humpback Whale Sentinel Programme (HWSP), a long-term biomonitoring initiative under AnMAP, which complements CCMLR's ecosystem monitoring and is supported by the Southern Ocean Research Partnership (SORP).
Key roles include representing SCAR at Antarctic Treaty meetings, serving on the Australian Research Council’s Panel of Experts (2019-2022), and leading SCAR’s ImPACT Action Group (2017-2023). She advocates for circum-Antarctic research, open-source science, and policy-relevant communication. Her work integrates chemical monitoring, marine megafauna studies, and climate change impacts, with a focus on POPs, microplastics, and Antarctic krill behavior.
Recent research highlights include discovering Antarctic krill’s ability to fragment microplastics into nanoplastics and contributing to the establishment of AnMAP as a UNESCO Ocean Decade Project. She coordinates the Southern Ocean Persistent Organic Pollutants Program (SOPOPP) Lab and teaches courses on marine megafauna and science communication. Her funded projects include the Nuyina Underway Science Program ($10.65M) and studies on sea-ice impacts on humpback whales.
