dr ailie gallant


Trained as a climate scientist, I am a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment in the Faculty of Science at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

My research seeks to characterise and understand climate variability and change, primarily for the Australasian and Antarctic regions. Most of my research relates to examining climate extremes and their impacts, with a particular focus on drought.

My specific research interests include:
  • Examining the processes regulating Australian droughts.
  • Characterising decadal to multi-decadal scale climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere.
  • Distinguishing the natural and anthropogenic causes of changes to Australian climate extremes. 
  • Interpreting variability in the pre-instrumental climate using paleoclimate data and providing dynamical explanations of past climate variability.

I am also passionate about climate science education and communication, and I regularly tweet using @SafariPenguin.

Career path


My education and training has primarily been in atmospheric science, climatology and applied mathematics. I have an Honours degree (1st class) and Bachelor of Science from Monash University, which included a one-year exchange at the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (2002/03). 

I completed my PhD in 2009, also at Monash University. My dissertation, titled 'Trends in extremes of the Australian climate', was supervised by Prof Michael Reeder (Monash University), Mr Kevin Hennessy (CSIRO) and Dr James Risbey (CSIRO). 

I have completed two postdoctoral research positions at the University of Melbourne, Australia (2009-2011) and at the University of Washington, USA (2011-2012). During my postdocs, I worked on problems associated with climate variability and change in the Southern Hemisphere. Most of my research concerned Australasian and Antarctic climates and much of it examined climate extremes such as drought, extreme heat and heavy rainfall.

In 2013, I returned to Monash to take up a Lectureship. I taught undergraduate subjects in climatology for 2 years and continued my research on Southern Hemisphere climate variability and change. During my first 2 years at Monash, I also completed a Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice.

I was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher (ARC DECRA) Award in 2014 for a project 'Rethinking Australian drought risk, its long term variability and processes', which will be undertaken from 2015 to 2017.

Career highlights


Awarded an ARC DECRA Fellowship in 2014 for the project 'Rethinking Australian drought risk, its long-term variability and processes'.

Member of the SEARCH Team - winners of the 2014 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research.

Publications in Nature and Nature: Geoscience in 2014 and 2013 respectively.

Australian Academy of Sciences Theo Murphy High Flyers Think Tank 2014 - Rapporteur for the group 'Food and Water Security'.

Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science.

Partner Investigator for the Co-operative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities.

Chair of the Equity and Diversity committee of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

National Secretary of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (2007 – 2010).

Winner of the award for Best Student Paper at the 14th National Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (2007).