Rate My Professor Belinda Medlyn

Belinda Medlyn is a Distinguished Professor in Ecosystem and Earth System Modelling at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. She serves as Theme Leader for Ecosystem Function and Integration and leads the Climate and Forest Ecosystem Modelling (CAFE M) group. Medlyn holds an Honours degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Adelaide and a PhD in theoretical biology from the University of New South Wales. Following her PhD, she spent four years as a postdoctoral researcher in Europe, working closely with experimentalists to interpret data. Upon returning to Australia, she worked part-time for several years after having two children before resuming full-time research. She joined the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment in 2015.

Medlyn's research focuses on how plants, especially forests, respond to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and climate change. She develops evidence-based models of ecosystem productivity, water use, and species composition under global change, operating at the interface between experiments and models. She collaborates with experimental teams worldwide to test and refine ecosystem models and examines the role of fire in global change effects. Her career highlights include appointment as Western Sydney University Distinguished Professor (2019), the university's Excellence in Research (Researcher of the Year) Award (2019), Australian Research Council Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship (2019), Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science (2023), honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona (2024), Ralph Slatyer Medal from the Australian National University College of Science (2022), Fellowship of the Royal Society of NSW (2020), and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Plant and Animal Science (2021-2023) and Cross-Field (2018-2020). Key publications include "Triggers of tree mortality under drought" (Nature, 2018), "Reconciling the optimal and empirical approaches to modelling stomatal conductance" (Global Change Biology, 2011), "TRY – a global database of plant traits" (Global Change Biology, 2011), "CO2 enhancement of forest productivity constrained by limited nitrogen availability" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010), "Microbial competition for phosphorus limits the CO2 response of a mature forest" (Nature, 2024), and "Carbon-phosphorus cycle models overestimate CO2 enrichment response in a mature Eucalyptus forest" (Science Advances, 2024). Her contributions have advanced global understanding of vegetation responses and carbon cycle feedbacks.