Professor Ellsworth is a world expert and an eminent professor in the area of plant ecophysiology and plant and ecosystem responses to climate change. He leads a world-renown elevated CO₂ experiment in Australia which has been published in Nature and Nature Climate Change. Ellsworth is dedicated to understanding our changing Earth system and the interaction between land ecosystems and the atmosphere. With this expertise he forms a perfect fit to the Natural Capital Research Platform of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (UGent) and related research at all Belgian partner institutes for this Francqui Chair: UAntwerpen, Université de Liège, Vrije Universiteit-Brussel, Université Libre de Bruxelles, UHasselt and UCLouvain.

UGent and the six partner Universities nominated Prof. Ellsworth as an international Francqui Professor because of his expertise on the science of climate change and land surface climate interactions across temperate and tropical regions. In the framework of this nomination a series of interactive, multi-disciplinary lectures will be organised for young researchers from the six partner Universities to engage with Prof. Ellsworth on the topic of Natural Capital in times of climate change.