Chair
Dr Debra Cousins
Former Board member, Western Australian Marine Science Institution, WA Biodiversity Research Institute, Premiers Science Council
Dr Deb Cousins has extensive experience working at the interface of government, universities and industry in agriculture and food, biosecurity, and public health. Her strengths include high-level policy development, strategic and creative thinking, stakeholder engagement, governance, and risk and project management.
About
Deb has significant experience in Senior Executive leadership roles including in the Australian Biosecurity CRC for Emerging Infectious Diseases, in Primary Industry Departments in WA and Victoria and in the five years prior to her retirement in 2022, providing high level policy advice to government in support of industry development, and building science, innovation, and STEM capability in WA. She was a member of the WA Science Council for 6 years, providing independent policy advice to government, and her Board experience includes the WA Marine Science Institute, the WA Biodiversity Science Institute, the WA Cyber Security Innovation Hub, and the WA Data Science Innovation Hub.
Deb began her career as an applied microbiologist working for the Department of Agriculture and Food in Western Australia. For more than 20 years her focus was on the successful eradication of bovine tuberculosis from the Australia cattle herd. Her expertise was recognised by the World Animal Health Organisation by her appointment as Director of the International Reference Laboratory for Tuberculosis from 1993 to 2010, providing technical and policy advice to scientists and global policy making committees, respectively.
Deb grew up in the WA wheatbelt and stays connected to agriculture through family farming businesses involving broadacre crops, sheep and horticulture. She has a B App Sci from Curtin Uni, a PhD in Microbiology (with Distinction) from the University of WA, more than 90 publications from her time as a researcher (up to 2003), and a current H-index of 44. Deb is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
