Selina Ward

Selina Ward is a coral biologist who worked as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, Australia until 2023. She completed her PhD in 1997 and completed a postdoctoral Fellowship with the University of Sydney before starting at the University of Queensland in 2000.

Dr. Ward has conducted important research into the responses of corals to environmental stress including elevated nutrients, mechanical damage and elements of climate change such as ocean acidification and temperature elevations. She has been particularly interested in the early life history stages of corals.

She has been an advisory editor at Coral Reefs and is an ex-president of the Australian Coral Reef Society, where she is an active council member coordinating many submissions on important reef issues for the Australian Government. She is regularly asked to provide advice to government, industry and non-governmental organizations. She does a great deal of Australian and international media work and speaks regularly at public fora and meetings. Dr. Ward coordinated the Stanford University in Australia program, along with other undergraduate and postgraduate courses at UQ, and supervises a number of postgraduate students. She created and ran an employee program for Rio Tinto Alcan over many years, which involved taking four groups a year to the reef for a field and lecture course on coral reefs. Dr. Ward was the Program and Partnerships manager for the International River symposium for eleven years and is a board member of the Australian Marine Conservation Society.