Professor Shelley Burgin appointed head of Mirvac School of Sustainable Development at Bond University

Environmental scientist Professor Shelley Burgin has been appointed as the head of the Mirvac School of Sustainable Development at Bond University.

“I’m here to put the sustainability into sustainable development,” she has advised.

She has spent over three decades studying the environment, with particular emphasis on minimising the impact of urban development on native species.

Burgin joins Bond from the University of Western Sydney (UWS), where after 23 years, she was appointed as an emeritus professor on retirement.

While environmental science as a study area at Bond is relatively new, Burgin says she was attracted by the privilege of working in Australia’s first six-star green star-rated educational building, which was “huge for someone like me whose discipline area is the environment”.

As part of Bond’s Institute of Sustainable Development and Architecture, the Mirvac School of Sustainable Development sits alongside the Soheil Abedian School of Architecture, bringing architecture, development and environment under the one umbrella.

Burgin was formerly the president of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW.