Dr Alex Lechner is a landscape ecologist and Professor, teaching on the Master of Urban Design at Monash University Indonesia. He is also the Vice-President of Research and Chair of the Monash University Indonesia Research Committee (MIRC). In his role as VP Research, he has promoted the application of transdiscplinary approaches to addressing global environmental and social challenges.

He has over a decade of international experience conducting research and teaching on the applications of interdisciplinary approaches to urban sustainability, environmental science and geospatial analyses. He has held a variety of roles in Australia at the University of Queensland and University of Tasmania, in Malaysia at the University of Nottingham Malaysia and most recently at the University of Lincoln, UK. Originally from Australia, Alex has a BSc in Ecology from the University of Queensland, and a MAppSci specialising in Geospatial Science and a PhD in Landscape Ecology from RMIT University. He is also an adjunct fellow at the University of Queensland and an honorary Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Malaysia.

His research focuses on the application of application of integrated socio-environmental approaches, along with spatially explicit modelling and remote sensing. His current research areas include sustainable urban planning, natural resource management, extractive industries and biodiversity conservation. He has undertaken research across the world from Oceania to Southeast Asia and Europe and has a successful track record of applying landscape ecology methods to a broad range of cross-cutting areas with ongoing projects in the following areas: 1) modelling threats to the environment from infrastructure development and resource extraction using big environmental data and machine learning, 2) applications of Nature-based Solutions to urban sustainability; and 3) supporting socio-environmental change with interdisciplinary approaches to modelling and collaborating across environmental domains and disciplines. 

Project websites

• Policy and governance approaches to cooperative mitigation of peatland carbon emissions and transboundary haze in Southeast Asia - APN
• Enabling multispecies transitions - Research Council of Finland
• Resource Frontiers - Ford Foundation
• Mining spatial data intelligence for ecological and social risk assessment