In additon to being Director of the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research, Rod is also Head of Department of Resource Management and Geography at the University of Melbourne.

He has a B.Sc. (Forestry) from the ANU and a PhD in forest ecology from University of British Columbia. He was research program leader at the Bureau of Rural Sciences in Canberra and  has research interests in climate change adaptation, forests carbon cycling, ecosystem services, environmental policy and sustainable forest management. He has undertaken research in Canada, Japan and Papua New Guinea. He is a member of the UN-FAO Advisory Group for the Global Forest Resource Assessment