Professor David Suggett is Director for the KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI) at Shushah Island and a Professor in Practice at KAUST. Prior to moving to KAUST in 2023, he held appointments at the University of Essex, U.K., and the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. During his tenure in Australia, he established and led the "Future Reefs" program dedicated to unlocking how the environment and climate change influence corals of the Great Barrier Reef. This interest led to a world-first partnership between researchers and tourism to rehabilitate coral reef sites at scale, the "Coral Nurture Program," which he co-founded and led for four years. Work through the Coral Nurture Program has led to innovative methods to propagate and plant coral for reef restoration, and in recognition as a global model for successful targeted reef restoration, become an official Actor for the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration in 2022. Professor Suggett has contributed to numerous international committees and workshops for studying and conserving coral reefs, and he has served on the Coral Restoration Consortium - the international body dedicated to advancing knowledge on reef restoration – in several capacities since 2020. His research has produced more than 225 scientific publications, technical manuals, and book chapters, and he has served, since 2006, as a Subject Editor for the leading environmental Journal, Global Change Biology. 

Professor Suggett's research focuses on how the environment and climate change influence the capacity for reef building corals to thrive and survive. An important feature is development and application of innovative technologies to screen the health and functioning of corals, notably pioneering novel bio-optical (e.g., active fluorometry) and physico-chemical (e.g., mass spectrometry and gas chromatography) approaches to resolve the complex metabolic physiological pathways by which corals adapt to rapidly altering environments. Current work integrates such tools into modern day reef management approaches, including reef restoration practices and community-based conservation.