Prof Andersen is Professorial Fellow - Research Excellence and Impact with Charles Darwin University. He was previously a Chief Research Scientist with CSIRO Land and Water and Officer-in-Charge of CSIRO’s Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre in Darwin from 1995 to 2016, leading a team of up to 30 ecologists, socio-ecologists, economists, students, and support staff with a mission to deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits to northern Australia. Prof Andersen’s primary research interests are in the global ecology of ant communities, where he integrates community ecology, macroecology, historical and contemporary biogeography, and systematics to gain a predictive understanding of ant diversity, behavioural dominance, and functional composition in relation to environmental stress and disturbance globally. He applies this understanding to the use of ants as bioindicators of ecological change.