Professor Rob MacKenzie PhD FRSC

• BSc (Hons) Environmental Chemistry, Edinburgh, 1986
• PhD “Small System Modelling of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer”, Essex, 1989

Rob currently does no class-based teaching but does supervise PhD and MSc projects.

Rob MacKenzie is interested in how plants affect air composition. He is inaugural Director of the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), which includes the BIFoR Free-Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) facility, which is the current focus of much of the work in Rob's group. Topics include the effects of elevated CO2 on aboveground and belowground carbon cycling and the coupling of carbon, water, and nutrient cycles.

Rob's group develops atmospheric chemistry models for urban, rural, and remote settings. The group is interested in informing environmental policy-making and in developing tools for urban planners and regulators.

Machine learning is a recurring theme in the group's work in forests and atmospheric chemistry, dating back to the 1990s.

Rob MacKenzie has supervised over 20 PhD students and he is currently Principal Investigator of the Forest Edge Doctoral Scholarship Programme of the Leverhulme Trust.

I am an atmospheric scientist and experienced manager of very large-scale research facilities: the stratospheric aircraft, Geophysica; and ecosystem manipulation, BIFoR FACE.

My group develops atmospheric chemistry models (e.g. Dai et al., NPJ Clim.Atmos. Sci., 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-022-00323-w), and applies models to remote and polluted environments (Hewitt et al., PNAS, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0907541106 ; Hewitt et al., Nature GeoScience, 2011. doi:10.1038/ngeo1271).

A major focus of my research is biosphere-atmosphere interaction, particularly for forests (Bannister et al., Rev. Geophys., 2022. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021RG000746). This work is now developed through the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), of which I am Founding Director, and particularly the BIFoR FACE facility (2017-2026 and, we hope, beyond). Our work is expanding to encompass all forest FACE facilities, especially AmazonFACE.

I am an accomplished inter- and cross-disciplinary researcher, in forests and in urban sustainability (e.g., Hewitt et al., 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01164-3) and lead the strongly interdisciplinary Forest Edge Doctoral Scholarship programme.

Machine Learning is a recurring theme in my research (e.g., Hyde et al., 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2016.12.004, which is becoming an influential paper in on-the-fly clustering).

Rob MacKenzie has served the scientific community in a variety of ways, including:

• Member of the NERC Pool of Chairs (2010 - 2013). 
• Member, Birmingham City Council Smart City Commission (2012-2013)
• Associate editor for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and has acted as editor for 5 special sections of the journal.
• Reviewer for the European Commission (2006 -2008), including acting as project evaluator for the AMMA-EU Framework VI project
• Executive Committee member of the SCOUT-O3 integrated project (2004 - 2009)
• Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Economic Interest Grouping that ran the scientific programme of the Geophysica research aircraft (2000 - 2006)
• Secretary to the Atmospheric Chemistry Specialist Group of the Royal Meteorological Society (1994 – 1998)
• External examiner, University of Leeds MRes “Physics of the Earth and Environment” (2003 - 2007)