Bruce leads the CSIRO Ecosystem Change Ecology Team based in Perth, Western Australia, is the Program Director of Ecosystem Processes and Threat Mitigation at the Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute (WABSI) and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia.

Bruce is a plant ecophysiologist specialising in plant-resource allocation and plant-ecosystem interactions. With interests in invasion science and conservation biology, he applies an ecophysiological approach to address questions relating to (i) the effect of rapid environmental change on invasive plants, (ii) the implications of landscape connectivity and fragmentation on both invasive and threatened plant populations, and (iii) the effect of climate change on yield and nutritional value in tropical crops. The common theme underpinning his current research is how plant fitness is variously influenced by abiotic, biotic and dispersal drivers, and how this fitness, in turn, impacts on population dynamics and species ranges. He runs projects across a range of ecosystems, with a particular focus on the tropical ecosystems of northern Australia and SE Asia, and complements this field-based research with controlled-condition laboratory experiments and mechanistic modelling.