+ "text": "PhD Students\n\nSharad Bayyana\n\n\n\n\nSharad is a marine biologist who has joined the School of Environment as a PhD candidate. He comes from India, where he was engaged in several marine and wildlife research projects, after completing his master’s in marine biology. He also holds a post-graduate diploma in Remote Sensing and GIS. Back in India, he conducted research at the Wildlife Institute of India, in understanding the spatial ecology of Dugongs, mangroves succession in the Nicobar group of islands after the tsunami of 2004, and coral reef biodiversity assessment of Malvan Marine Sanctuary, along the west coast of India. He has previously worked at the Horniman Museum, London as a visiting researcher, to conduct research on coral reproductive biology and restoration practices. Lately, at Wildlife Conservation Society-India, he was involved in developing data-driven strategies for management practices of Marine Protected Areas along the west coast of India, before moving to Brisbane. For his PhD, he will pursue the implications of climate-driven risks on the biodiversity dynamics under the project “Portfolio projection of biodiversity responses under climate change”. The project aims to quantify adaptive and migration responses as vulnerability metrics, providing resource managers with novel tools to formulate flexible management strategies.\n\n\n\n\nDiego Bezerra\n\n\n\n\nDiego is an interdisciplinary marine ecologist interested in understanding the ecological mechanisms that drive ecosystem health. He foremost focuses on delivering scientific information to improve marine protected areas’ conservation outcomes. He is currently investigating elasmobranch migratory connectivity across reefs, and multispecies network models in conservation planning. He is also researching elasmobranch movement using network analysis as a tool to estimate population structures. Finally, his project aims to provide a baseline for shark migratory movement in Australia, strengthening understanding of connectivity within and beyond national jurisdictions.\n\n\n\n\nKristine (Tin) Buenafe\n\n\n\n\nTin is a PhD candidate from the Philippines working on climate-smart marine conservation planning with a particular focus in the high seas. While she enjoys coding all-day, working to develop reproducible tools and frameworks used to facilitate the uptake of climate-smart approaches in on-the-ground, applied conservation planning approaches, she wishes to continue navigating the science-policy interface, particularly in relation to the Biodiveristy Beyond National Jursidiction (BBNJ) Agreement.\n\n\n\n\nEmer Cunningham\n\n\n\n\nEmer is a marine ecology student and researcher, who lives and works in her hometown of Magandjin (Brisbane). Emer acknowledges that this ‘home’ is unceded, sovereign Aboriginal Country, and is committed to learning more about the lands and waters that she cares about so deeply. Back in 2018, Emer started a Bachelor of Advanced Science (Honours) at the University of Queensland – and she’s never left. Emer is in the final year of her PhD, investigating the patterns and drivers of ‘novel’ ecological states within coral reef ecosystems and pelagic plankton communities. Currently, Emer is working in the MME Lab researching ‘novelty’ in our changing climate – and helping to integrate this concept of rapid, unprecedented environmental change into marine spatial planning.\n\n\n\n\nAlvise Dabala\n\n\n\n\nAlvise is a PhD student at the Mathematical Marine Ecology Lab and the Applied Marine Biogeography Lab, supervised by Prof. Anthony Richardson and A/Prof. Daniel Dunn. His research focuses on developing climate-smart and connected spatial prioritisations for mangrove conservation to protect mangrove biodiversity and ecosystem services. He holds an Erasmus Mundus Master’s degree in tropical ecology (TROPIMUNDO). During his thesis, he developed a global study which identifies priority areas for mangrove conservation that maximise ecosystem services. Before starting his PhD at The University of Queensland, he joined the iAtlantic project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, developing spatial prioritisations for the conservation of the Atlantic Ocean at the University of Azores.\n\n\n\n\nAharon Fleury\n\n\n\n\nAharon Fleury completed his Master of Science Biology (Fisheries) program at University of Victoria, Canada in 2016 where he evaluated the reproductive ecology of hagfish off the coast of Vancouver Island. He has since worked five years as an environmental consultant performing ecological and human health risk assessments and modelling the movement of contaminants to humans, plants, and animals via biotic transport pathways. The aim of Aharon’s PhD research is to develop and apply a framework, built on an individual-based model, for environmental impact assessments of marine species that explicitly incorporates connectivity across a migratory cycle and facilitates decision-making by incorporating stakeholder values.\n\n\n\n\nYunzhe Liu\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHannah Moloney\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSandra Neubert\n\n\n\n\nSandra is a marine data scientist with an interest in marine spatial planning and ecosystem modelling. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Marine Biology from the University of Plymouth and a MSc in Bioinformatics from the University of Leipzig. Sandra previous experience includes writing R packages and Shiny apps to facilitate stakeholder engagement with time-efficient and reproducible marine spatial planning apps. Her research focuses on designing marine protected areas and assessing their costs and benefits from an ecological and economic perspective. Her PhD will address multiple-use spatial planning in the Global South in a joint project by the University of Queensland and the University of Exeter.\n\n\n\n\nAlice Pidd\n\n\n\n\nAlice is a final-year PhD student with a supervisory team spanning the University of the Sunshine Coast and the University of Queensland. Her research uses CMIP6 climate projections up to 2100 to: (1) identify climate refugia across various exposure metrics within Australia’s existing marine protected area (MPA) network; (2) assess the climate connectivity of existing MPAs using climate velocity trajectories; and (3) incorporate these layers into a spatial prioritisation to explore alternative MPA configurations that may be more robust to long-term climate impacts. An interloper from NSW, Alice has a past life in fisheries science, having previously developed Ecological Risk Assessments and contributed to Stock Assessments for both NSW and QLD commercial fisheries. She is pursuing post-doc opportunities, and is particularly interested in long-term approaches to marine conservation, quantitative marine ecology, data visualisation, and functional programming.\n\n\n\n\nJaime Restrepo\n\n\n\n\nJaime (read: Hi-Meh [Hispanic name]) is a Colombian researcher and conservationist, with a background in environmental sciences. He has a master’s degree from the International Institute for Conservation and Wildlife Management from the University of Costa Rica. Jaime has more than a decade of experience working on the field and studying some of the most important populations of marine turtles globally, monitoring major rookeries for leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea), hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) and green turtle (Chelonia mydas). Jaime has also been involved in conservation programs to protect the recovering population of jaguars (Panthera onca) at Tortuguero National Park, in Costa Rica. Currently, Jaime is an active member of the International Sea Turtle Society; as such, he has taken part on several symposia both presenting his research outcomes and coordinating regional meetings, he is now a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, studying migratory connectivity for the two largest nesting populations of green turtles globally, implementing satellite telemetry monitoring combined with stable isotopes analysis to identify important foraging areas supporting these important populations.\nSome of his previous work can be found here.\n\n\n\n\nJosh Hill\n\n\n\n\nJosh is an ecologist with a background in fish functional ecology and ecosystem processes. He has a BSc (Hons) in Marine Ecology and is currently a PhD student at the University of the Sunshine Coast. His research interests include climate change, biogeochemical cycles, and the role of fish and zooplankton in marine ecosystems. Josh’s work focuses on quantifying the temperature dependence of zooplankton physiology and rate processes to better understand how different groups will respond to a changing climate."
0 commit comments