Co-Director: Professor Chris Ryan

Chris Ryan has worked for over 30 years across various areas of science, technology and environmental policy and design and in projects that span the community sector, academia, government and international agencies, and business.

His community sector work spans the creation of a number of networks of ‘alternative’ and ‘radical’ technology in the UK in the 1970’s; work that he brought back to Australia for the creation of several community technology programs and, in 1978, a community plan for environmental and socially-useful work that became the Centre for Research into Environmental Strategies (CERES), still existing today in the Melbourne Suburb of Brunswick.

In academic work he help found the first multi-disciplinary undergraduate socio-environmental degree program at RMIT University that spanned two faculties (Social Science and Architecture and Design). That program ran from 1984 to 1997. He was foundation professor of Design and Sustainability at RMIT from 1990 and Director of the National (Key) Centre for Environmental Design from 1989-98. In this position he directed the National EcoReDesign program, working with 20 Australian companies to develop a new eco-design methodology and new greener products for the market.

Professor Ryan left Australia in 1998 to take up a position of Professor, and subsequently, Director of the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) in Lund, Sweden. That Institute, which focuses on new sustainable systems of production and consumption, is attached to Lund University. Its research program is closely linked to the formation of government policy, innovation and industry strategy. Professor Ryan returned to Australia from Sweden in 2002 to work with RMIT’s Lab 3000 researching the potential for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to contribute to eco-innovation. The outcomes of that research appeared in Lab Report 03 - "Digital Eco-Sense: Sustainability and ICT, a new terrain for innovation". In parallel with that research, he initiated the international "Eco-Sense" program linking University design schools around the world to explore new possibilities for transformative eco-innovation.

He joined the University of Melbourne in 2006 as Professor and Co-Director of the Australian Centre for Science Innovation and society, as Director of the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (based on the Eco-Sense program) and as theme leader Sustainable Cities for the Melbourne Sustainable Societies Institute.

Professor Ryan has collaborated with many eco-design related research groups in Europe, including Domus Academy and the Politecnico di Milano, Italy and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. He has been a member of the international assessment panel of MISTRA in Stockholm for their four-year ‘innovative ideas for the environment’ research grants program (2004-8). He holds the position of Adjunct Professor in Design Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney and in Industrial Design at RMIT and is Visiting Professor at the IIIEE at Lund University. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the 'Journal of Industrial Ecology' (Yale University and Wiley-Blackwell Press). His most recent book is Imaging Sustainability, RMIT University press 2007. In 2008 he was awarded an ERASMUS fellowship for work on distributed systems and resilience.

His work with government and international agencies includes a range of policy reviews and research for state and federal governments in Australia, a four-year tenure on the Community Environment, Art and Design committee of the Australia Council and a membership of the Council’s Community Cultural Development Board. He has worked with the UK Design Council in London and with the UN Environment Program (Division of Technology, Industry and Economics) in Paris on various programs related to eco-design and sustainable consumption. He was the author of the UNEP Global Status Report on Sustainable Consumption for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. He is joint editor of the forthcoming UNEP Global Guide to Design for Sustainability (D4S). In 2008-9 he was Chair of the Premiers Design Award in Victoria and is Director-Curator of the DEAKINS 09, the Victorian government’s Alfred Deakin Lectures, on ‘Climate and Innovation’.

His industry work includes projects for Electrolux (Europe); Electrolux (Asia Pacific); Volvo Penta, (Sweden); Brio (Sweden); Body Shop (Australasia); Blackmores (Australia); Isle Property Development Group (Australia); Fletcher constructions (Australia). He has worked in long terms consulting roles with Schiavello Systems Furniture (Australia) and the Transurban group. He is a Board member of the Banksia Foundation, Australia’s peak environmental awards agency.

australian centre for science, innovation and society

Co-Director: Professor Chris Ryan