Professor Roger Cousens is a plant population biologist with over 25 years experience, particularly in the study of weeds and invasive species. He authored the highly successful Dynamics of Weed Populations with Martin Mortimer (1995) and the best-selling Western Weeds: A Guide to The Weeds of Western Australia with several other weed nuts (1997; 2nd edition 2007). Dispersal in Plants (2008) is the first systematic text plant dispersal for over thirty years. He has over a hundred other publications, from population dynamics, the mis-use of statistics, competition, weeds, seaweeds, endangered orchids and any academic argument that fires him up. Over the years he has been blessed by a long string of wonderful co-authors and grad students, as well as one or two others! At the Weed Research Organization, his first "proper" job, he was referred to as the "general irritant and stimulus", a title of which he is proud.After lasting only 6 months in a civil engineering degree, he completed an environmental biology degree at Aberystwth in 1977, under the enthusiastic tutelage of Andrew Agnew and David Causton. He then studied inter-tidal seaweeds with the noted mathematical ecologist E C (Chris) Pielou in Canada, producing a very non-mathematical PhD thesis in 1981. After a brief stint working on fisheries models in the UK, he turned to weed research with the Agriculture and Food Research Council before moving to Australia in 1989 at the height of the Thatcher cuts. Since then, he has worked at the University of Sydney, the Western Australian State Government, and La Trobe University, before taking up his current chair at the University of Melbourne. He has survived repeated staff reductions with just about every employer and is awaiting the latest cuts at Melbourne with trepidation. He teaches ecology, various aspects of weed biology and control,a range of other demands made of him (e.g. Managing Urban Green Spaces) as well as his Faculty's most successful elective Management of Plant & Animal Invasions. He is a lapsed morris dancer, ex-hockey and badminton player, and now an over-rated lawn bowler. His other interests are photography, sea fishing, gardening and the history of Victoria's regional botanic gardens. He is a member of the National Trust (Victoria) Gardens Committee and the Landscape Advisory Committee of the Heritage Council of Victoria.