UNSW Sydney aims to lead the debate and shape the public discourse on the greatest issues facing humanity. The Grand Challenges Program has been established to facilitate these critical discussions, and in the process raise awareness of research undertaken by UNSW academics, staff and students.

There are currently three declared Grand Challenge topics – Inequality, Living with 21st Century Technology and Rapid Urbanisation. Previous Grand Challenges include Climate Change and Refugees & Migrants. Each Grand Challenge will feature a series of events and activities that will shine a spotlight on different ideas and themes arising from each topic.

Scientia Professor Rob Brooks is the Lead of the UNSW Grand Challenges Program.

He is designing and bringing to life a program to lead debate and inform policy concerning the complex challenges of the 21st Century. 

Brooks also directs UNSW’s Evolution and Ecology Research Centre where he describes himself as ‘an evolutionary biologist who thinks about sex for a living’. He and his research group study how sex shapes the lives of humans and other animals, including mate choice, the biology of ageing, and the links between sex, diet, obesity and death. 

He has won prizes for both his research and his writing, including Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World, and has become an advocate of evolutionary research as a means of better understanding both nature and the human condition.

For more information about Professor Rob Brooks, please view his faculty page here.