Chief Investigator

Associate Professor Fiona Johnson (University of NSW)

Bachelor of Engineering (Civil, First Class Honours and University Medal)
PhD (Civil & Environmental Engineering)

Fiona has a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) where she also completed her PhD in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering on methods for climate change impact assessments. Johnson spent five years as a consulting engineer prior to her commencing her PhD research. She was a hydrologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology prior to joining UNSW as a lecturer in 2012.

Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney. Her research interests are in understanding the science of rainfall extremes, how rainfall and hydrology will change in the future and how these impacts can be mitigated through improved engineering for Australia and communities in the developing world. She is particularly interested in extreme value models and her recent work has investigated the use of wavelet transforms for understand long time scale variability in water resources systems.

In addition to the DARE Centre, Fiona has extensive experience in industry collaboration and translating academic research output for industry and into societally relevant outcomes. She has led influential consulting projects for the NSW Office of Water and the Bureau of Meteorology; the outcomes of which informed policy and management decisions around water and climate change management. She has been a peer reviewer of a number of industry hydrological studies, ensuring that current research is well integrated into practice.