William Cheung

Professor and Director, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia and Canada Research Chair in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change

Dr. William Cheung is a Professor and Director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, the University of British Columbia. He is also a Canada Research Chair in Ocean Sustainability and Global Change. He is an international leader in developing and using scenarios and models of biodiversity and ecosystem services to understand the responses and vulnerabilities of marine human-natural systems to global change. His work addresses policy-relevant research questions and cuts across multiple disciplines, from oceanography to ecology, economics and social sciences. His research ranges from local to global scales. He is the Principal Investigator of the Changing Ocean Research Unit at UBC. He served as Director of Science for the Nippon Foundation Nereus Program, a nine-year international program, which focuses on key threats to ocean sustainability with the goal of predicting what the world’s future oceans will look like under global change.

William is actively involved in international and regional initiatives that bridge science and policy. For example, he served as Coordinating Lead Author for the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services IPBES). He serves as Associate Editor for Global Change Biology and Ecological Society of America’s Frontier in Ecology and the Environment.

William obtained his BSc and M.Phil. from the University of Hong Kong. He completed his PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies at UBC. From 2009 to 2011, he was Lecturer in Marine Ecosystem Services in the University of East Anglia.