Professor Alan Deidun

• Associate Professor, Geosciences University of Malta

Prof. Alan Deidun is Director of the International Ocean Institute - Malta Training Centre and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (London). He is also an Associate Professor at the Physical Oceanography Research Group within the Department of Geosciences of the Faculty of Science of the University of Malta, being primarily trained and with experience as a coastal and marine biologist. He sits on the Board of the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) of Malta. He holds a PhD in biology and has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in several high-profile academic journals on various aspects of coastal and marine biology. He is currently lecturing within the Master of Science in Applied Oceanography, as well as in a number of other Masters courses at the University of Malta (including the Master in Ocean Governance). He is also currently supervising a number of number of student dissertations at Masters and PhD level and, since 2003, has contributed to numerous University taught and field courses. At the University of Malta, he has acted as Project Manager for the MED-JELLYRISK, SeaofSkills, PANACEA, BIODIVALUE and PERSEUS projects, and Coordinator of the Spot the Jellyfish and Spot the Alien Fish citizen science campaign.

He has coordinated the marine ecology section of numerous recent Environmental Baseline Study (EBS), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Appropriate Assessment (AA) studies. The main thematics which interest him are coastal (especially beach) and marine ecology, biological oceanography, ecological modeling, remote sensing monitoring of water quality, management and monitoring of marine living resources, ecology of islands, ecology of invasive species, Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s), Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and dynamics of jellyfish outbreaks.

He has also penned since 2001 hundreds of popular science articles for various media portals, including newspapers, magazines and journals and is Council member of the NGO Din l-Art Helwa. He is also a member of the Society of Biology of the UK the Societa di Biologia Marina of Italy of Italy. In 2011, 2012 and 2014, he was presented with the Environmental Journalism Award for Malta by the Institute of Maltese Journalism.