Stephen Simpson

Professor Stephen Simpson, PhD, is widely know in the scientific community for his cutting-edge research on the physiology of nutrition. His work has deep implications in the fields of ecology, evolution, agriculture and human health.

In 2005, after 22 years at Oxford where he was Professor of Entomology, he joined University of Sydney as an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, in 2008 he was awarded the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research, in 2009 he was named NSW Scientist of the Year, and in 2010 he was named as the Wigglesworth Medallist by the Royal Entomological Society of London.

Together with colleague David Raubenheimer, Steve has developed an integrative modelling framework for nutrition (the Geometric Framework), which was devised and tested using insects but has since been applied to a wide range of organisms, from slime moulds to humans, and problems, from aquaculture and conservation biology to the dietary causes of human obesity and ageing. In addition to nutritional biology, Steve’s research on locusts has led to an understanding of locust swarming that links chemical events in the brains of individual insects to landscape-scale mass migration.

Steve took up the Academic Directorship of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney in April, 2012. He also leads the Behaviour and Physiology Research Lab, studying the neural, physiological, ecological and evolutionary bases of animal behaviour.

Steve will be presenting a four-part documentary for ABC TV, Great Southern Land, to be aired in August/September 2012.