Tom Kompas

Professor Tom Kompas is the Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Biosecurity and Environmental Economics (ACBEE) and one of four Chief Investigators in the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA) at the University of Melbourne.

He has dedicated much of his recent time and work to public policy in Australia and the region. Until recently, he was a part-time Senior Economist at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), a Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) project leader on biosecurity and Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

In 2010, Tom was appointed to the Eminent Scientists Group (ESG) in the Department of Agriculture. The ESG provides independent advice to the Minister and the Secretary of the Department on matters of biosecurity and risk analysis. In 2012, Tom became Editor-in-Chief of Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, President of the newly-formed Asia and Pacific Policy Society and Publisher of Policy Forum (http://www.policyforum.net/).

Tom’s research specialises in applied economic dynamics, cost-benefit analysis and natural resource and environmental economics. His bioeconomic modelling and biosecurity research has been published in the world’s leading international journals (including Science, Nature Climate Change, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Land Economics, Environmental Modelling and Software and Conservation Biology), and his current work focuses on the major biosecurity issues in Australia and internationally.

In 2009, Tom received the ‘CSIRO Medal for Research Achievement’, in 2004, the ‘Crawford Award for Research Excellence’ from ABARE, and in 2011 the ‘Eureka Prize for Water Research and Innovation’. Over the past ten years, he has also received over $10 million in research and competitive grant income, and currently has 2,727 Google Scholar citations and an h–index of 29.

In 2009, Tom was a recipient of the University’s highest award for teaching, the ‘Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching’. In 2008, Tom also received the ‘Award for Teaching Excellence’ from the College of Asia and the Pacific at ANU, and in 2010 he received a national teaching award, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council ‘Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning’. He teaches (or and has recently taught) Masters Microeconomics, Applied Economic Dynamics, and a component of the School’s flagship course, Government, Markets and Global Change.

• Bioeconomic modelling
• Natural resource and environmental economics