Sharon Biermann was appointed in the position of Professor and Director of the Planning and Transportation Research Centre (PATREC,) based at the University of Western Australia, on 1 October 2012. PATREC is a collaboration between three Western Australian (WA) universities and three government departments as well as the Local Government Association. She is responsible for delivering on the PATREC mandate, to conduct collaborative, applied research and teaching in support of policy in the connected spaces of transport and land use planning. Her role includes leading and conducting research projects in the areas of integrated land use and transport futures; smarter personal travel decisions; integrated freight system optimisation; emerging technology; network optimisation and intelligence and transport infrastructure investment risk management. With PATREC partner support, she has successfully established a new program of research: Climate action in transport and land use planning, to support WA’s policy drive to net zero.  Tools and data are key to delivering on the PATREC programs of research. With a PhD in Geography, her specific areas of expertise include: scientific research leadership and management of integrated planning and infrastructure programs, Planning Support Systems and integrated land use, infrastructure planning and modelling and urban form and sustainable cities and regions and urban water management.

As Program Manager of the South East Queensland Urban Water Security Research Alliance, a five year partnership between the Queensland State Government, CSIRO, The University of Queensland and Griffith University, to help address the drought crisis, Sharon managed the Alliance Program from January 2010 to September 2012. The Program comprised 19 projects in three theme areas aligned with the Water Strategy for South East Queensland (SEQ): Demand Management, Water Quality and Total Water Cycle Planning and Management. In addition, she was more directly involved as the Project Leader for the Water Smart Cities project and was responsible for delivering a component of the Decentralised Systems project concerning rainwater tanks.

Before moving to Australia in December 2009, as Competence Area Manager: Planning Support Systems, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Built Environment, South Africa, Sharon managed four research groups: Urban and Regional Planning, Development Informatics, Geo-modelling and Sustainable Human Settlements, in the successful delivery of a range of integrated planning research projects including: evidence to support the National Spatial Development Perspective; an on-line Integrated Development Planning Information Centre; monitoring, evaluation and reporting methodologies to improve service delivery and the quality of water and sanitation infrastructure and a range of Integrated Development Planning guidelines and capacity building processes. She personally led and published on a number of substantial multi-year, multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary research projects including: The Demonstrator Toolkit for Integrated Planning, the Gauteng Spatial Development Perspective; a series of national level Housing Atlases; and, the Gauteng Directional Change in Housing Locality project, an integrated project investigating the costs and benefits of housing location in Gauteng, South Arica.

Before joining the CSIR, Sharon was Chief Professional Office – Land Use Planning at the Metropolitan Planning Department, Johannesburg City Council, where she was responsible for the metropolitan population and employment databases, metropolitan GIS and spatial analysis. During this time, she completed a part time M.Sc degree by dissertation with the title: “Residential development in the Johannesburg Metropolitan region: an analysis of the dynamics of urban sprawl”. She actively participated in the production of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Integrated Land use/Transportation Plan and was involved in boundary demarcation processes; Integrated Development Frameworks; GIS for metropolitan planning; land identification for low income housing (including specialist studies on land valuations and ownerships, engineering services systems capacity analysis, accessibility analysis, environmental sensitivity) and office location studies.