About us

Professor Peter Ralph: C3 was founded in 2008. We were originally a research institute that monitored and measured the impact of climate change on aquatic ecosystems. In the last decade, we’ve brought in a whole range of new teams and these new teams are working on whole ecosystem responses all the way down to cellular processes. So, we’re a much bigger team and we’re cross-disciplinary now.

In C3, we have a range of research topics that go from climate adaptation through to mitigation. A lot of our teams are developing solutions to help society understand how they’re going to respond to changes in the climate. Other parts of the team are developing solutions that are going to actually remove carbon from the atmosphere. That’s very rare for a research institute to have both those types of research in one institute.

Professor Martina Doblin: The C3 is a really unique research environment and it’s really through the provision of research infrastructure and technical skills that allow us to really accelerate our research outcomes. It’s also a fantastic environment for students and early career researchers to learn from one another – there’s an enormous scholarly and intellectual input that people have and a wonderful sense of emotional support as well to accomplish their research goals.

Associate Professor Dave Suggett: By being a research-intensive institute, we have conversations with biologists, ecologists, modellers – all of the tools that can really transform our research from being just pure question-driven science into more applied-driven outcomes.

Professor Peter Ralph: Some of the opportunities at C3 that really elps us work differently is our cross-disciplinarity. We’ve got a range of people that we call ‘integrators and they work across teams as opposed to being in a team. This gives the teams the ability to move into different areas that they’re not usually able to move in.

Professor Justin Seymour: Working in C3 is great because of the diversity of expertise amongst the people working in the institute, so that really opens up opportunities for collaborations in new area of research.

Professor Peter Ralph: C3 has a wide range of industry connections. What we’re trying to do is understand what industry has as a specific problem and match parts of our research to those problems, so we’re solving real-world industrial problems and providing an opportunity to translate our science into industry. Given the climate emergency that the globe has now recognised, C3 has solutions to climate problems. We need to work with new students, industries, government, to make these solutions real.