Westoby has been active in ESA since 1975. His research interests include state and transition language for ecosystem change, and trait-based variation in ecological strategies across species.

Julian Schrader is a vegetation ecologist with special interest in plant functional ecology, biogeography and conservation biology. He works as a Lecturer at Macquarie University. Julian has a broad interest in ecological research spanning from plant adaptations of single species to community assembly processes and patterns of biodiversity at global scale. His synthesising research linking functional ecology to island biogeography opened up new directions in understanding plant assembly processes on islands and fragmented habitats on the mainland. Currently, he is studying species spatial and temporal turnover dynamics and species movements under global change using a novel Australia-wide dataset of species occurrences on islands.

David Coleman’s research spans plant trait ecology, ecophysiology and biogeography. He is part of the plant ecology lab at Macquarie University, working on climates and community assembly of Australia’s island plants and more broadly across Australia. He completed his PhD research on water relations in Eucalypts and has since worked on the AusTraits project, a database of plant traits for Australia’s flora and A-island, a compilation of vegetation survey data for Australia's islands.

Reuben Stone is a PhD candidate in plant ecology at Macquarie University. He has a particular interest in coastal rainforest in eastern Australia and trait ecology.

Michael Sramek is an early-career researcher with experience in working with ecological and spatial data throughout NSW. He has completed an honours and research internships at UNSW, in which he explored areas of arid ecology and machine learning. His current work is focused on modelling the vegetation condition of NSW using plot data.

Camille is an ecologist who integrates on-the-ground field research and theoretical modelling to understand how plants cope with climate change. As a PhD student at Western Sydney University’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (HIE), she studies the impacts of warming and heatwaves on growth of Australian forests. Prior to that, Camille was awarded a 2022-23 postgraduate Fulbright scholarship at HIE after completing her bachelor’s degrees in botany and mathematics at the University of Florida. During her Fulbright grant, Camille developed and tested a novel model of plant water use that incorporated previously unaccounted for tradeoffs between heat and drought stress. Her earlier work focused on the physiology and biomechanics of pine savanna understory species, and has been featured in news outlets including The New York Times.

Aaron does ecological modelling as a PhD Candidate at The Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment. He uses a Dynamic Vegetation Model called LPJ-GUESS to study impacts of climate change and disturbance on forests. Particular interests are ecological resilience, and forest demography

I hold dual Bachelor's degrees from the University of British Columbia and Beijing Forestry University. During my undergraduate studies, I also participated in short-term exchange programs at Peking University and Kyushu University. I later completed a Master of Forestry (Advanced) at the Australian National University. During the COVID-19 period, I worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Highland Forest Science, part of the Chinese Academy of Forestry. I became a certified GIS Engineer (Level II, China) and contributed to projects involving the establishment of ecological monitoring stations in Shangri-La’s grassland ecosystems, as well as satellite-based land observation and LAI (Leaf Area Index) canopy analysis. In August 2023, I was awarded the Melbourne Research Scholarship to pursue a PhD in the WANA research group at the University of Melbourne. I passed my PhD confirmation in September 2024 and am currently in my second year. My academic and professional background has been consistently focused on forestry. I am dedicated to advancing research in this field. In 2025, I presented a poster at the Victorian Biodiversity Conference and was awarded the Youth Engagement in Forest Conservation Research Grant.

Lachlan Francis is a scientist at the Victorian Government’s Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research. Lachlan’s interests include the use of remotely sensed satellite data in conjunction with machine learning methods to derive spatial ecological products including fire severity mapping, species habitat modelling and other ecological questions applicable within these datasets. Lachlan is also involved in the development and application of ARI’s acoustic Artificial Intelligence software aimed at species detections in very large acoustic datasets and has also recently investigated Artificial Intelligence methods for undertaking population census’ for colonially nesting waterbirds in drone imagery.