Professor Gurr is well known internationally for his work on applied insect ecology and developing ecologically-based strategies to combat pests.

Work over the last three decades has spanned biological control of insect pests, plant defence, insect-vectored plant pathogens, chemical and molecular ecology.  His chief contribution has been to develop strategies for promoting the activity of natural enemies of pests and simultaneously delivering other ecosystem services. These methods are used on increasing numbers of farms, particularly in Asia. The work has been the subject of two of the three books for which he was senior editor and multiple papers with more than 100 citations each including a very highly influential (952 cites) Annual Review of Entomology paper. He has held Australian Research Council funding continuously since 2007 and is currently about to commence leading his fourth project for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, this valued at over $1.5M.

Professor Gurr has collaborated widely in Australia and overseas. He has held visiting professor positions at the University of Sydney, Zhejiang University and, currently, at Lincoln University (New Zealand) and Fujian Agriculture & Forestry University (FAFU). The latter is now supported by a $1.8M dollar 'Thousand Talents' fellowship. Work at FAFU culminated recently in the publication of the diamondback moth genome in Nature Genetics while other work in Asia on rice pest management is about to be published in Nature Plants.

• Applied insect-plant ecology
• Biological control of pests
• Biodiversity and ecosystem services
• Sustainable agriculture
• Insect vector-phytoplasma-plant interactions
• Developing country cropping systems