Vihanga Gunadasa is awaiting for final examination of her PhD Thesis at the University of Sydney. Coming from a statistics background, she is interested in exploring data science applications in ecology. Her research is focused on building a bayesian near-term iterative framework to forecast population abundances of species.

I am a final-year Economics PhD student at Monash University interested in understanding the interdependencies between nature, biodiversity, and human well-being, and providing evidence to inform effective policies that improve outcomes in coupled human and natural systems. My research focuses primarily on applying causal inference and machine learning methods to the empirical analysis of socio-economic and ecological data.

Alison is an ecologist with expertise in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. Her work focuses on the impacts of land use and management, climate variability, and fire on vegetation dynamics. Her research uses remote sensing, field survey and dendrochronology techniques to understand ecosystem processes and to support evidence-based approaches to restoration and adaptive management.

Xenia is a PhD candidate at Monash University, researching the effectiveness of population models in predicting the genetic outcomes of translocations. Her works involves using individual-based models to test how environmental disturbances affect population persistence and how translocations influence the genetic composition of populations, particularly low-frequency genetic variation. A key focus of her research is the continual improvement of population models to enhance their predictive power and support more effective conservation planning. Xenia moved to Australia after completed her Master’s degree in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. There, she worked on whole-genome sequence data to investigate the extend of introgression from domestic goat into an iconic wild goat of the European alps, the Alpine ibex (Capra ibex). Her research interests centre on understanding the genetic signatures of evolutionary and demographic processes and applying this knowledge to conservation biology.

Adam is a researcher for CSIRO Environment with 30yrs experience in wildlife monitoring on species ranging from Seals to Cassowaries and Flying-foxes.

TBD

Brendan Wintle is Professor in Biodiversity Conservation and Director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute at the University of Melbourne. He develops ecological-economic methods to support conservation decisions and policy. He has been Director of Australia’s Threatened Species Recovery Research Hub and UN IPBES coordinating lead author. He serves on the Zoos Victoria Board and was recently elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria. He publishes on biodiversity assessment, monitoring and reporting design, cost-efficient conservation spending, and species loss under environmental change. He has held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and was theme leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. He is a Lead Councillor on Australia’s Biodiversity Council. He harbours strange obsessions with a the greater glider, spider orchids, playing football (round ball), and watching Tigers play the ovoid ball version. He once met the Queen and Michael Parkinson in the same week, but was too polite to admit he was a republican.

My name is Roopika Subhash, and I am a current student at the University of Melbourne, studying a Bachelor of Science and majoring in environmental science. My time at UniMelb has encompassed learning about topic including soil health, ecology, human geography and geomorphology. As a student, I am an proactive environmental volunteer and member of my university's sustainability team. Additionally, I have experience working alongside Australian NGOs to mitigate environmental policies and understand the effects of climate change.

Kita is a PhD candidate researching ecological interactions in terrestrial ecosystems of the sub-Antarctic islands. She is interested in the unique environments and invertebrate biodiversity of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic, biosecurity, and conservation under climate change.

I am an Honours student within the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. I am interested in large scale patterns in ecology and species distribution modelling. In particular my honours research focuses on testing the effectiveness of maxEnt, through validation with temporally independent data.