Peter Minchin, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

I received my B.Sc. with 1st class Honours in Botany from the University of Tasmania in 1976 and my Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Tasmania in 1984. After various research and teaching positions in Australia and the USA, I joined the Department of Biological Sciences at SIUE in 2004 and was promoted to Professor in 2016. I am currently Vice President for Publications on the Governing Board of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS). My main research interest is the development and evaluation of multivariate statistical methods for analyzing ecological communities and the application of these methods to the conservation and restoration of communities. From 2004-2022, I taught undergraduate and graduate courses in general biology, ecology, conservation biology, biostatistics, wildlife and vegetation techniques, and travel study in biology. In addition, I advised undergraduate and graduate students who undertook research projects through my lab. Most student research was in the area of conservation biology or restoration ecology and involved a combination of field-based observations or experiments and data analysis or modeling in the lab. More mathematically inclined students undertook projects in the development and evaluation of methods for community analysis.

I retired from SIUE in December, 2022 and am no longer accepting undergraduate research students or new graduate students. I am able to serve on graduate student committees, so if you are doing a Master's research project in Bilogical Sciences at SIUE that may benefit from my expertise in plant ecology, conservation biology or biostatistics, please contact me.