Chris Turney

Turney was educated at St Bede's School, graduated from the University of East Anglia with a BSc in Environmental Science and completed his PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London.

He was previously Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Exeter. He was awarded the J.G. Russell Award (2004) by the Australian Academy of Science, the inaugural Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal by the International Union for Quaternary Research in 2007, a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2008, the Bigsby Medal of the Geological Society of London in 2009, and the Frederick White Prize by the Australian Academy of Science in 2014.[2] In 2010, Turney was awarded a five-year Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. He has published four books[3][4][5][6] and more than 180 scientific research papers.[7]

In 2013−2014, Turney led the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, a privately funded expedition to the Antarctic in the "Spirit of Mawson", to investigate environmental changes across the region and communicate the value of scientific research. Scientific findings include the recognition of a 1965 Carbon-14 peak preserved in "the Loneliest Tree in the World" and shrubs growing on Campbell Island, New Zealand, that offer a possible marker for the proposed Anthropocene Epoch in the geological timescale.[8] On the return home Turney's ice-strengthened vessel became trapped by a substantial breakout of sea ice. His book on the expedition's discoveries and the team's experiences trapped by sea ice were published in Iced In: Ten Days Trapped on the Edge of Antarctica.;[9] in Australia and New Zealand, the same book was published under the name of Shackled.[10]

Turney has helped to set up a carbon-refining company called CarbonScape, which has developed microwave technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make green by-products, including sustainably produced graphite used in lithium-ion batteries.[11][12]

Turney has published more than 200 research papers,[12] 1 textbook and 3 popular science books, attracting more than 14,000 citations.[11] He has an H-index of 58 on Google Scholar (52 on Scopus and 58 on ResearchGate). This output put Turney on the 2018 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher list, representing the 1% most cited scientists in the world. In the past six years Turney has led Category 1 research projects worth more than $5.5 million (with a career total of $61 million).

• Australian Academy of Sciences Frederick Stone Award (2014)
• Australian Laureate Fellowship (2010)[13]
• Geological Society of London’s Bigsby Medal (2009)
• PhilipLevehulme Prize (2008)
• International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) inaugural Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal (2007)