He was Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis (ACERA), latterly CEBRA, and Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany at the University of Melbourne until 2017.
Burgman worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980s before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990.
Burgman works on applying model-based risk assessment to problems in conservation biology.
He has worked in a range of environments including marine fisheries, forestry, irrigation, electrical power utilities, mining, and national park planning.
[4] His most recent book is Trusting judgements: how to get the best out of experts which appeared through Cambridge University Press in 2015.