Rate My Professor Stephen Burgess

Dr. Stephen Burgess serves as an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Western Australia. He completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours at Murdoch University from 1991 to 1995 and earned his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Western Australia in 1999, focusing on water uptake by roots of woody plants in the Department of Botany. His research expertise encompasses plant ecophysiology, sap flow measurements, ecohydrology, and environmental sensors, contributing to sustainable development goals such as Zero Hunger, Clean Water and Sanitation, and Life on Land. Throughout his career, Burgess has held positions including Research Associate Professor in Vegetation and Water at the University of Western Australia from 2010, Adjunct Senior Lecturer at UWA from 2009, and Research Fellow in the School of Plant Biology at UWA from 2003 to 2009 as part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity. Earlier roles include a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley from 2000 to 2003, a brief lectureship in Plant Soil Water Interactions at the University of Sydney in 2009, and consultancies with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, and ICT International Pty Ltd.

Burgess's influential publications include 'Maximum heat ratio: bi-directional method for fast and slow sap flow measurements' published in Plant and Soil in 2021 with co-authors Lopez, Pypker, Licata, and Asbjornsen; 'How Climate Shapes the Functioning of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests' in Current Forestry Reports in 2020 with Eller, Meireles, Sitch, and Oliveira; and 'Changes in plant functional traits and water use in Atlantic rainforest: evidence of conservative water use in spatio-temporal scales' in Trees - Structure and Function in 2016 with Rosado, Joly, Oliveira, and Aidar. He received a PhD Scholarship from the Department of Conservation and Land Management in Perth from 1996 to 1999 and a Postgraduate Research Fellowship from the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry in Nairobi from 1996 to 1997. Since ceasing full-time employment in the sciences in 2012, he has continued as an increasing contributor and Adjunct Research Fellow at UWA from July 2017.