Prof Peter Steinberg
Professor Peter Steinberg
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
Peter Steinberg is Emeritus Professor of Marine Science at UNSW Sydney, retiring in 2021 after 30 years at UNSW. From 2009-2020 he was also the Director of the multi-university Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS). He is an internationally eminent Australian marine scientist with interests in kelp forest systems, coastal ecology and habitat restoration, environmental microbiology, and marine conservation and management. He has also in the last 20 years increasingly focused on the broad societal context of his research, incorporating art, community engagement and the commercial sector to try and build strong government and community support for the sustainable use of coastal environments. He has over 250 publications and 10 patents, including publications in Science, Nature, PNAS and other leading journals, which have been cited over 40,000 times for an h-index of 100. He has an outstanding record of grant success, including an unbroken record of ARC funding while at UNSW, and has been a CI on > $65M of funding ranging from competitive government funding to philanthropy to raising money on the stock market.
Professor Steinberg has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and CEO of an ASX listed biotechnology company. Awards and citations for Peter’s research include the Australian Marine Science Association’s signature Silver Jubilee Award in 2017 for outstanding contributions to Australian marine sciences and the 2021 NSW Premier’s Science and Engineering Prize for Excellence in Biological Sciences (Environmental). He has been a Web of Science highly cited researcher annually 2020 - 2024, awarded to the top 1% of researchers globally.
Peter has extensive science leadership and governance experience. As the inaugural Director of SIMS, he grew the Institute into NSW’s largest independent marine institute. He has further been Head of a major research school at UNSW Sydney and led or co-led substantial research centres at UNSW and in Singapore (where he was a visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University from 2010 – 2022). In the early 2000’s research by Peter and his colleagues led to the establishment of Biosignal Ltd., a start-up company for which Peter was first Research Director and then CEO, listing it on the ASX before the technology was acquired by Unilever, who are now commercializing the technology in the dental products area.
He is currently a board member of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), Australia’s tropical marine research agency, and chairs the Research Advisory Committee for the nation’s main oceanographic research vessel, the R/V Investigator (Marine National Facility). He is also a board Member of Ocean Impact Organisation (OIO), a not-for-profit start-up accelerator/incubator specialising in the marine technology space, and of the Kelp Forest Alliance, a NFP aimed at global kelp forest conservation and restoration.
Beyond his current roles, Peter has been heavily involved in many of Australia’s other most prominent marine science programs or initiatives. SIMS operates the NSW node of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), and he served on the IMOS Board for many years. He was similarly on the Executive Group of the National Marine Science Committee while Director of SIMS and was part of the lead authorship group for Australia’s National Marine Science Plan 2015-2025. From 2017 - 2024 he was a member of the Marine Estate Expert Advisory Panel (MEEKP) for NSW, the peak advisory body to the NSW Government for the management of the NSW Marine Estate.