I’m a senior scientist in ecological modelling at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, and an honorary senior fellow at the University of Melbourne.
In my research, I aim to engage directly with the environmental management challenges faced by practitioners and agencies. My work is informed by decision science, and I draw broadly from mathematics, statistics and programming to propose workable solutions.
Through my roles at universities and now at DELWP, I have partnered with government agencies, NGOs and community groups on issues of threatened species conservation, invasive species control and sustainable natural resource management. I love to collaborate – with ecologists and other environmental specialists, with practitioners holding local ecosystem and operational knowledge, with economists, and with fellow mathematicians and statisticians.
Projects I’m currently working on include:
- State-wide prioritisation of DELWP resources for conservation (Strategic Management Management Prospects), with Jim Thomson, Billy Geary, Tracey Hollings, Matt White and David Parkes
- Integrating expert-elicited predictions and ecological survey data to predict faunal responses to fire, for use in the Fire Analysis Module for Ecological Values (FAME) decision support tool, with Josephine MacHunter, Simon Watson and Nev Amos
- Optimal deployment of surveillance effort in hawkweed and willow management programs with Jos Moore, Emma Bennett, Matt White, Agriculture Victoria, Parks Victoria, and the CMAs of eastern Victoria
- Improved methods for biological control decision-making with Greg Lefoe, Libby Rumpff and Agriculture Victoria
- The value of flexible and dynamic resource allocation in conservation planning with Chung-Huey Wu & Mick McCarthy
