Rob Johnson is a jack-of-all trades, Doctor of Philosophy, agilist, scrum master, recovering oceanographer, doer and oddball. Described by a colleague as “…good at turning data into insights. Rob communicates complex matters effectively and is comfortable saying ‘I don’t know, but I know how to find out’, he also happens to be genuinely excited by scientific challenges and his passion motivates others to do their best. With a string of successful science projects under his belt, Rob has become known for his warm and engaging personality, authentic insights, and wealth of knowledge and experience that he applies to new challenges. Through all of this he has developed a great ‘BS’ detector, which allows him to make progress where others get stuck.”


Rob currently works on helping others grow, learn, and become the best they can be. He is a senior agile program manager & scrum master helping specialiised science teams build state of the art nowcasts for lightning and thunderstorms, automate business processes and optimise decision making for Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAFS), and develop machine learning based weather nowcasting. Rob has worked on broad range of projects from measuring Antarctic Phytoplankton photo-physiology, algorithm development for space based remote sensing, weather modelling using machine learning and AI, to High Performance Computing and data engineering for earth system modelling.

Being interested in all fields of science, and instantly memorable, speaks volumes about how Rob goes about life and represents himself to the world. He wholeheartedly believes that science is capable of incredible things… if it is made useful to people and communities. He is at his best when leading teams and people.

Rob lives in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia