Rate My Professor Tom Baldock

Professor Tom Baldock serves as Head of School in the School of Civil Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at the University of Queensland. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering and a Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London, along with the Diploma of the Imperial College (DIC) and membership in the Institution of Engineers Australia (MIEAust). His research centers on Coastal and Ocean Engineering, covering swash zone hydrodynamics and sediment transport, wave overtopping including tsunami overtopping, coral reef hydrodynamics and shoreline behavior, long wave generation and surf beat, extreme non-linear waves, storm surge and tsunami hazards, impacts of sea level rise on open and reef-fronted coastlines, surf zone processes and beach erosion, infrastructure for offshore aquaculture, and wave energy conversion. Professor Baldock maintains extensive national and international collaborations on coastal engineering challenges, including work with government agencies, and offers consultancy and expert witness services in marine engineering.

With over 120 journal papers and more than 80 conference papers published in leading journals such as the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and Proceedings of the Royal Society, Professor Baldock is the most published author in Coastal Engineering over the past decade. Key publications include 'A laboratory study of non-linear surface waves on water' (Baldock et al., 1996, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society), 'Long wave forcing by the breaking of random gravity waves on a beach' (Baldock and Huntley, 2002, Proceedings of the Royal Society), 'Long wave generation by the shoaling and breaking of transient wave groups on a beach' (Baldock, 2006, Proceedings of the Royal Society), and 'Overtopping of solitary waves and solitary bores on a plane beach' (Baldock et al., 2012, Proceedings of the Royal Society). He has supervised 18 PhD students to completion since 2007—three receiving Dean’s awards—and currently supervises six PhD candidates, with his students publishing over 60 journal papers. In 2017, he was awarded the UQ Award for Excellence in HDR Supervision. Professor Baldock contributes editorially as a member of the Coastal Engineering Editorial Board and the Engineers Australia National Committee on Coastal and Ocean Engineering, and he chaired the Organising Committee for Coasts and Ports 2017. He currently leads efforts in the National Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program addressing Great Barrier Reef challenges.