Rate My Professor Nicola Browne

Dr. Nicola Browne serves as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University. She obtained her PhD in Marine Sciences from James Cook University in 2011. After completing her doctorate, she undertook a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in Singapore, focusing on the effects of ship-wake induced sediment resuspension on coral reefs and seagrass beds in collaboration with the National University of Singapore and DHI Water & Environment. In 2014, she returned to Australia and joined Curtin University in a teaching-focused position within Experimental Biology, advancing to Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow roles until 2023.

Browne is a recognized coral ecologist whose research centers on coral reef carbonate budgets and the resilience of reef-associated islands to climate change stressors such as tropical cyclones and sea-level rise. Her studies quantify biological carbonate production from corals, calcareous algae, and foraminifera, alongside erosion rates from physical, chemical, and biological processes. She has conducted fieldwork on turbid reefs across the Great Barrier Reef, Pilbara coast of Western Australia, Borneo, Madagascar, and Singapore, demonstrating enhanced resilience of turbid-water corals to thermal stress via physiological and growth assessments. In 2018, she received the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) DE180100391 to develop dynamic models predicting reef island futures using integrated carbonate budgets, paleoecology, sedimentology, oceanography, and geomorphology. Key publications include "Corals reveal ENSO-driven synchrony of climate impacts on the Great Barrier Reef" (Scientific Reports, 2020), "Global declines in coral reef calcium carbonate production under ocean acidification and warming" (PNAS, 2021), "Encrusters maintain stable carbonate production despite coral declines in the Maldives" (Global Change Biology, 2022), and "Resilience of turbid coral communities to marine heatwave" (Coral Reefs, 2024). Her work, cited over 2,400 times, informs conservation strategies for marginal reef environments amid global environmental change. Browne has also engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations applying social science methods to reef research and contributed to media discussions on coral health and globalization pressures.