John Hooper is an international authority on sponges (Phylum Porifera), with specific research interests in their taxonomy, systematics, evolutionary biology, biogeography, biodiversity informatics and conservation biology, and in global biodiversity and marine conservation in general. He has collaborated extensively with various ‘biodiscovery/ bioprospecting’ agencies since 1987, searching for new therapeutic pharmaceutical compounds from marine invertebrates. Amongst the most prominent agencies were the United States National Cancer Institute, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement New Caledonia & French Polynesia, the Cancer Research Institute at the University of Arizona, the Coral Reef Research Foundation in Palau, the University of Utah Medicinal Chemistry Group, the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, and the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (formerly Eskitis) at Griffith University where he holds an Adjunct Professorship. Through these collaborations the Queensland Museum was given the unique opportunity to build extensive collections of sessile marine invertebrates from reefs across tropical Australia, Southeast Asia, the Indo-Malay Archipelago, the western Pacific rim and throughout the Pacific islands, with over 100,000 specimens generally across all sessile phyla, and specifically about 35,000 specimens in nearly 5,000 species of sponges, 1,000 tunicates and 600 octocorals – a significant proportion new to science. These collections underpin new knowledge of marine biodiversity and have more than tripled our previous estimates of species biodiversity. Recent new avenues of research include molecular genetics and "CO1 barcoding" the entire sponge and octocoral collection at the Queensland Museum, in collaboration with Ludwig Maximillians Univeristy in Munich, Germany and funded in part by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation’s Marine Barcoding of Life (MarBOL) initiative, and part of the US NSF funded Porifera Tree of Life (PorTOL) initiative. Already, even though still very much in its infancy, these new data have contributed significant new hypotheses to the previously chaotic taxonomy of the Porifera, in particular. So far Dr Hooper has described and revised over 600 new species, 10 new genera, 2 new families and suborders of sponges since 1982, with over 250 peer-reviewed publications and 125 other technical, popular and conference papers and industry reports. Over his career he has raised over six million dollars in external grant funding, supervised several PhD and postdoctoral students, holds two adjunct appointments, and serves as Chair on a number of national committees, editorial and advisory boards in both scientific and administrative capacities (the most recent being the Chair of Council of Heads of Australian Faunal Collections, Chair of the Atlas of Living Australia Management Committee, and the Australian Biological Resources Study Advisory Committee). He was Head of the Biodiversity & Geosciences Program (formerly Natural Environments Program) at the Queensland Museum between 1999-2018, leading a group of approximately 34 permanent scientific and technical positions, up to 15 grant funded staff and a pool of over 60 active Honorary staff and volunteers to discover and document our unique marine and terrestrial, living and fossil faunas. He is currently an Honorary Associate at the Queensland Museum.
Australia