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How do we feed the world, adapt to and mitigate climate change, and conserve biodiversity? My research addresses these critical questions by quantifying the trade-offs between agricultural production, climate change, and biodiversity in tropical agricultural landscapes. A key focus of my work is agroforestry—the strategic integration of trees into cultivated lands. While agroforests are not a one-size-fits-all solution, my research shows that agroforestry, when informed by a quantitative understanding of these trade-offs, can improve biodiversity and climate outcomes without compromising agricultural productivity.

Through fieldwork and conservation planning, and in collaboration with my wonderful colleagues at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science (CBCS), I aim to understand how agricultural landscapes can be optimized across large geographic areas, to best meet conflicting goals and improve biodiversity outcomes. The goal of this work is to improve sustainability outcomes across West Africa, where tropical forests have been rapidly converted in order to produce 60% of the world’s cocoa.

Coen is an interdisciplinary biologist researching and teaching in anticolonial scientific praxis. Coen has scientific expertise in ecological and evolutionary biology, molecular biology and animal physiology and has published academic works across disciplines. Coen has broad interests in centering Indigenous priorities and Indigenous rights in scientific research, emphasising respectful engagement with Indigenous communities. Coen's work bridges cultural and scientific gaps, fostering a deeper understanding of Indigenous ways of coming into knowledge as a valid scientific endeavour. Coen is willing to take on students across a broad range of topics especially those interested in contributing to anticolonial research.

Coen is a trawlwoolway pakana related to northeast lutruwita (Hearps, Briggs family) and accountable to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. Coen grew up as a visitor to many lands in so-called Australia and currently is associated with Yuggera and Turrbal lands around Magandjin.

Prior to his current position, A/Prof Johnstone served as deputy director of the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland for 5 years, as well as the Assessment and Monitoring theme leader in the Coastal CRC, and as a member of the scientific advisory committee for CRC Reef. He has a long professional history in coastal nutrient and ecosystem function research, as well as in the communication of science to the community, government, and private sector bodies. In addition, A/Prof Johnstone has a longstanding international reputation in his field, having spent approximately 20 years undertaking CZM research and project management in over 13 countries on behalf of government and international donor agencies including IOC-UNESCO, Sida, and the World Bank.

Within Australia, A/Prof Johnstone’s work is focussed on the understanding of benthic habitats, with an emphasis on nutrient processes and dynamics in coastal ecosystems. This includes aspects such as the influence of land-based inputs on coastal ecosystem function and its influence on specific outcomes such as toxic algal blooms.

Professor Salit Kark is a conservation and environmental scientist, with international experience examining the processes shaping biodiversity and their implications for conservation, ecology, environmental decisions, practice and management. Kark and her group provide international leadership in the areas of conservation science, prioritization, invasive species, urban ecology, spatial planning, island conservation, terrestrial, marine and coastal conservation, human-wildlife conflict, and cross-boundary collaboration, working across land-based, coastal and marine environments and collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders and partners in Australia and internationally. The Biodiversity Research Group is a dynamic research team led by Professor Salit Kark at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia with interests in conservation science, ecology and biodiversity. The Kark Group works on a range of conservation, environmental and ecological aspects and collaborates with multiple groups worldwide across terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems and across spatial scales, ranging from regional to global to help solve key environmental questions, ecological, sustainability and conservation challenges around the Planet. We mentor and train future generations of conservation scientists and practitioners, working with local communities and partners internationally to enhance conservation that supports livelihoods and communities.

Kark and her Biodiversity Research Group students and fellows work on addressing environmental and conservation challenges using advanced approaches and tools across multiple spatial scales, from global to local (examining latitudinal and altitudinal gradients), and in both terrestrial (birds and mammals mostly) and marine ecosystems. This includes work across both natural and human-dominated landscapes, examining the generality of spatial patterns and processes. Kark's work integrates socio-economic and historical factors as well as biological and ecological drivers in disentangling the role of the multiple factors that shape biodiversity and its conservation and management. In this framework, Kark's work advances the links between science, practice and policy and in leading actions that allow us to improve science-based conservation. Our group works to enhance close collaboration in conservation with Indigenous and local communities.

Kark is currently serving as a member of UQ's Cultural Inclusion Council and one of UQ's Senate committees and has served on the Promotions and the Confirmation Committee of the Faculty of Science (LCPC), as well as the School of Biological Science's Equity and Diversity Committee (ongoing), the research committee and the the First Nations Engagament committee (ongoing).

Professor Kark served as Deputy Director of UQ's Faculty of Science Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science. Kark was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and is currently teaching and research academic and Professor at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia) and was a Chief Investigator at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED; 2011-2018) and CEED's Theme A (Environmental Policy and Management) Leader. Kark was Chief Investigator of the Commonwealth-supported NESP Threatened Species hub (2015-2021). In this hub, Kark has initiated and led the national-scale Australian islands conservation project (Saving Species on Australian Islands), which aims to examine and prioritize the conservation of threatened species and actions for native and invasive species across Australia's 9000+ islands.

Kark's Biodiversity Research Group is very international, enhancing gender equity, cultural diversity, and Indigenous engagement, and includes students and fellows from over 20 countries. Kar's graduates are now based across continents in key positions in a broad range of governmental organizations, NGOs, academic organizations, industry, the private sector, and diverse conservation, management and policy roles.

Kark completed her PhD in 1999. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University (between 1999-2002) working with Prof. Harold Mooney, Prof. Gretchen Daily and Prof. Paul Ehrlich at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford.

Between 2002 and June 2013, Kark was a full-time research and teaching faculty member (Senior Lecturer) where she established and led the Biodiversity Research Group, which she currently leads at the University of Queensland.

Carissa Klein is an ARC Future Fellow at The University of Queensland and Deputy Director of The Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science. She is a conservation scientist and leads a research group called The Ocean Conservation Team, a group of students and post-doctoral researchers focused on developing science to support marine and coastal conservation. Her team's research is motivated by real-world conservation management and policy problems and is done in partnership with numerous non-government organisations (e.g. Wildlife Conservation Society), government departments (e.g., Sabah Parks in Borneo), and foundations (e.g., Minderoo) around the world. Her research group specialise in integrating social, economic, and ecological information to develop solutions that improve outcomes for nature and people. Their generally falls into three themes: land-sea conservation planning, marine spatial planning (ocean zoning), and sustainable seafood.

Carissa has degrees in Chemistry (BA, 2000), Environmental Science (BA, 2000), Environmental Science and Management (MS, 2006) and Conservation Science (PhD, 2010). Her postgraduate studies were at The University of California, Santa Barbara and The University of Queensland. She has received numerous competitive awards, including two that acknowledge her achievements in setting up successful and lasting international collaborations: The Asia Pacific Economic Corporation Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE) and the American Australia Association Sir Keith Murdoch Fellowship.

Disrupting the status quo and closing the circular bioeconomy

Dr Jitka Kochanek is the founder and leader of the Plant Performance Laboratory at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. At the interface of biology and materials science, she utilises bioengineering to disrupt the status quo within the global bioeconomy. Specifically, her pioneering research aims to supersede dated industry practices with new, highly efficient products and to replace outdated materials (unsustainable, damaging etc) with cutting-edge biomaterials that close the circular economy.

Her latest scientific achievement has been the discovery of a new material that is a ‘technology platform’ upon which multiple technologies are being developed through tailoring of parent materials, such as for biomedical and food packaging applications, as well as for agriculture and environmental rehabilitation. In 2021 she gained private industry funding from a prominent Australian SME for translation and commercialisation is expected over a 2–5-year timeframe. Since parent materials are plant-based, the platform promises a closed circular economy.

In the agri-environmental space, Dr Kochanek’s vision is sustainable real-time plant regulation, using novel biomaterials and technologies. The most commercially advanced product promises to be a disruptive tool for better future-proofing agriculture and wild plant ecosystem restoration, having successfully delivered emerging growth regulators that assist plants to cope with climate-related stressors, such as heatwaves and drought. Additionally, classic chemistries have been delivered to plants at 100-10,000-fold lower dosages than current commercial practices, thus generating social licence and slashing chemical costs.

Dr Kochanek has collaborated with some of the world’s top organisations and researchers, such as conservation ecologists at Kew Gardens in the UK, natural product chemists via the Flematti Group at the University of Western Australia and materials scientists within the Rowan Group at the University of Queensland. She has had the pleasure of supervising/mentoring >30 research students and 2 postdoctoral researchers.

Other notable career achievements

Since 2010 Dr Kochanek has been principal chief investigator across 8 industry and government projects worth >$2.3M (Federal/Horticulture Innovation Australia, Local/Brisbane City Council, State/Qld Government and private industry projects), a research consultant for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR, developing sustainable and cost-effective crop sanitation technologies in Papua New Guinea) and won the CSIRO ON-Prime accelerator program in 2019 for her visionary agri-technologies. Other notable achievements are that Dr Kochanek became a stand-alone researcher at <2 years post-PhD, after securing funding as principal CI ($302K, 2010); has developed a novel systematic framework to close the circular economy for waste recycling technologies; was among the first to confirm empirical evidence for epigenetics in plants or animals; and has developed a bioassay to rapidly ascertain plant responses for growth promoting/harming compounds. The bioassay provides the ability to predict chemical dosages for plants within 1 week.

My current research is all about finding ways to improve teaching and student learning, with a focus on biology and other sciences. This is a new and exciting direction for me to which I and my group are now dedicated. Of particular interest to me is finding ways to improve communication abilities of science students through the design, testing and implementation of effective curricula, class activities and assessment methods. Naturally, no learning occurs in isolation, so my current research also looks at learning scientific reasoning, information literacy, and how to improve the relevance and authenticity of practical/lab classes and assessment tasks.

Previously my research focussed on using physiological approaches and techniques to address questions in ecology, conservation and aquaculture, especially in vertebrates living in extreme environments (see references for examples). I continue to be involved in biological research through teaching, co-supervision and examination of postgraduate students.

My current projects aim to find effective ways to...

• Improve abilities of first year biology students to work effectively in groups.
• Improve science students’ communication abilities through the development and implementation of a new 3rd year course titled Communicating in Science.
• Improve scientific reasoning and writing in first year biology students.
• Improve tutor support and consequently student learning through implementation of a program of tailored tutor professional development.
• Improve information literacy in first year biology students.
• Motivate students to improve their biological knowledge and use of modern communication technologies by implementing authentic assignments throughout the curriculum e.g., websites, video, blogs.
• Improve the ability of students to articulate the skills and knowledge they develop in undergraduate ecology research through the use of a skills portfolio.
• Improve student practice and confidence in avoiding plagiarism and adhering to academic integrity.

Conservation, biology and ecology of large marine vertebrates

Current research interests:

• Population ecology of dugongs and coastal dolphins
• Population genetics of dugongs
• Physiology, functional morphology and ecology of dugongs
• Health assessment of inshore marine mammals, particularly dugongs

Andrew is a population biologist in the School of Biological Sciences. A broad goal of his research is to understand the effect of environmental variability on the stability of ecological communities. At the same time, in order to deliver on this broader goal, he is working to scale up understanding from simple tractable systems to the more complex dynamics of real world-systems.

Before joining UQ, he was a Marie Curie fellow working with Jonathan Levine and Alex Hall at ETH Zurich (2018-2020), a postdoctoral fellow in Daniel Stouffer's lab at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2017-2018), and a CEHG (Centre for Computational, Evolutionary and Human Genomics) postdoctoral fellow in Tad Fukami's lab at Stanford University, USA (2015-2017). He did his PhD (2011-2015) with David Keith in the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW Australia.

Dr. Li has been making noteworthy strides as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Queensland since June 2023, demonstrating his broad expertise in environmental science. His current research endeavors are focused on soil organic carbon, mentored by the university's esteemed soil research group.

His scholarly journey was rooted in Shandong University, where he acquired a Bachelor's degree in Soil Science (2011-2015). His intellectual curiosity drove him to the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he accomplished a Master's degree in Soil Ecology (2015-2018) and later a Ph.D. in 2022. Simultaneously, he pursued a second Ph.D. at Griffith University from 2020 to 2023. This rigorous academic pathway led him to a brief but enriching Postdoctoral tenure at the Technical University of Denmark from February to May 2023.

Dr. Li's research portfolio is a testament to his intellectual versatility and commitment. It encompasses a variety of critical environmental issues, ranging from sustainable livelihoods for pastoralists in grassland ecosystems to geospatial pattern analysis, grassland degradation management, soil organic carbon studies, and wood decay fungi and community ecology. He also excels in employing bibliometric/scientometric and machine learning analysis in ecological studies. With such a wide gamut of expertise, Dr. Li stands at the nexus of several environmental science disciplines, poised to make substantial contributions.

In recognition of his academic excellence, Dr. Li has earned prestigious accolades. He received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad in 2021, ranking him among the top 500 worldwide. The following year, he was distinguished with the President's Award for Excellence from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, positioning him in the top 400 recipients.

Professor Lovelock's research focusses on the influence of environmental change, including climate change, on the ecology of coastal and marine plant communities and in providing knowledge to underpin conservation and restoration of these ecosystems now and in the future.

Kathryn's research and work have focussed on coral reef ecology, coral ecotoxicology, larval dispersal, and reef monitoring, as well as fisheries management. Her recent projects at UQ have been on the XL Catlin Seaview Survey team, where she worked on the Great Barrier Reef, Indonesia, the Philipines and Taiwan. Currently she is working on the Allen Coral Atlas project, and the Great Barrier Reef Mapping Project within the Remote Sensing Research Centre, where she aranges the logistics, collects field data, and utilises her reef ecology background to train an Automated Image Annotation program to identify benthos on Geo-referenced photos collected around the world. The Allen Coral Atlas aims to create the first consistent geomorphic and benthic map of the coral reefs of the world, utilising satelite imagery, field knowledge, geo-referenced benthic photos, and cloud processing on Google Earth Engine.

Dr McDonald-Madden is an ARC Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management at the University of Queensland and a Chief Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NESP Threatened Species Hub and is a founding member of UQ Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science. Her research is focused on improving environmental decision-making in complex systems.

To resolve questions in environmental decision-making her team uses a suite of analysis techniques that are largely novel to ecology and conservation. The foundation of our work is ‘Decision Theory’, a concept initially used to maximise the effectiveness of scarce military resources while dealing with the uncertainties always present in war. By investigating the use of techniques from fields such as manufacturing sciences, artificial intelligence research and economic theory her group hope to improve decision-making in the face of complexity that is inherent, but often ignored, in environmental problems, incorporating the social context of decisions, the complexity of interacting species and the uncertainty faced by decisions makers.

Eve’s groups work spans all forms of conservation decision-making including population management, organisational and government reporting, the management of interacting species, ecosystem services and conservation planning.

Dr McDonald-Madden completed her PhD at the University of Queensland (2009), prior to that she worked for the Victorian Government on biodiversity research and management whist completing a graduate diploma in Mathematics. She has two young children.

Peter began his career helping to design MPAs in Belize, Central America. On realising how little science was available to guide this he moved to the University of Sheffield to undertake a PhD on the use of remote sensing for mapping coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves. After his PhD, Peter won a NERC Post-doctoral Fellowship to study ecological processes on coral reefs and moved to the University of Newcastle to join the Centre for Tropical Coastal Management Studies. He was then awarded a Royal Society Fellowship to integrate empirical ecological data into models of coral reefs with a view to studying how changes in human activity can affect the health of reefs. At this point he moved to the University of Exeter where he was made Professor at the age of 34. In 2010, Peter moved closer to coral reefs when he moved to the University of Queensland to take up an ARC Laureate Fellowship. He loves living in Australia! Peter was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation in 2010, and is also winner of the Rosenstiel Award for excellence in marine biology and fisheries, and the Marsh Award for contributions to marine conservation.

Michael Noad graduated with a Bachelor of Veterinary Science from UQ in 1990. After working primarily as a small animal vet in Queensland and the UK, Mike returned to Australia to undertake a PhD in humpback whale acoustic behaviour at the University of Sydney in 1995. In 2002, after finishing his PhD, Mike became a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Integraitve Biology at UQ. In 2003 he was employed as a lecturer in the School of Veterinary Science. He is currently a professor at UQ, dividing his time between veterinary science, where he teaches anatomy, and marine science, the focus of his research. In 2019 he became the Academic Director of the Moreton Bay Research Station, and in 2022 the Director of the Centre for Marine Science while still retaining a substantive apointment in the School of Veterinary Science.

Research:

The key areas of Mike's research are the effects of anthopogenic underwater noise on whales, the evolution and function of humpback whale song, social learning and culture in animals, and marine mammal population ecology. With regards to the effects of anthropogenic underwater noise on whales, there is currently a great deal of concern about how anthropogenic noise such as military sonar, oil and gas exploration activity and commercial shipping traffic, may adversely affect marine mammals. Mike has been involved in several large collaborative projects in this area, the largest being BRAHSS where the team studied the behavioural changes of humpback whales in response to powerful seismic airguns. His work on the evolution and function of humpback whale song is focused on how the animals themselves use sound to communicate. The songs of these whales is one of the most complex acoustic displays of any animal known. The songs are not static, but constantly change, and although the songs are almost certainly used as a sexual signal, the changing nature of the song makes understanding how this works challenging. His work on social learning and culture in animals also involves humpback whale songs, but focuses on how the whales learn the songs from each other, both within and between populations. As the patterns are usually unique to a population but can be transmitted over time to other populations, humpback song is the most extreme example of a vocal cultural trait in any species as well as an excellent model for studying social learning, the process whereby the whales perceive and learn new songs. Mike's last research area is marine mammal population ecology, and the primary project is the population ecology of the east Australian humpback whales. This population was almost completely extirpated in the early 1960s through hunting, but has since undergone a rapid recovery. Its long term trajectory, however, is uncertain due to a number of factors including possibly overshooting the natural carrying capacity of the population, and climate change.

Dr. Melanie Oey is currently Research Officer at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience in the Group of Prof. Ben Hankamer. She was born in Berlin, Germany, and went to the University of Potsdam to study Biochemistry. During her studies she worked at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, Germany, where she also received her Ph.D. in 2009 for her work on the production of lysin antibiotics in tobacco plants. In the same year she came to Australia to work at the University of Queensland, and has since then developed new technologies which are base for the newly launched "Breakthrough Science Program in Algal Biomedicine" at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

Her research interestes are:

- High value product production (e.g. vaccines, antibiotics, pain killer) in Algae via chloroplast and nuclear transformation

- Improvement of bio-hydrogen production from microalgae

- Development of new molecular tools for microalgae

Her work has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

I have a strong interest in applied research, using information to improve policy. I have a broad interest in applying population genetics to the management of wild populations, particularly through a better understanding of dispersal.

Hugh Possingham's research interests are in conservation research, operations research and ecology. More specifically his lab works on problems to secure the world's biological diversity: efficient nature reserve design, habitat reconstruction, optimal monitoring, optimal management of populations for conservation, cost-effective conservation actions for threatened species, pest control and population harvesting, survey methods for detecting bird decline, bird conservation ecology, environmental accounting and metapopulation dynamics. He has always been actively involved in conservation policy and advocacy - to learn how listen to "The 2023 Univ Canberra Krebs lecture on Science, Maths and Environmental Policy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix2_UamShUw"

Hugh is 40% UQ in the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science to our website homepage (https://cbcs.centre.uq.edu.au/); 10% Accounting for Nature and 10% co-chair of the national Biodiversity Council. He sits on c30 other boards and committees pro bono.

His research projects are in the field of decision theory in conservation biology, including co-developing Marxan MaPP - Marxan (marxansolutions.org):

• Biodiversity offsetting
• Biodiversity markets
• Conservation policy at all levels of government
• Reserve design, biodiversity management and fire regime management
• Population viability analysis (PVA) - including the development of ALEX
• Pollination ecology
• Metapopulation dynamics
• Ecological economics
• Optimal monitoring and environmental accounts
• Stochastic modelling
• Biodiversity and climate change
• Population dynamics of marine organisms
• Marine reserve design
• Marine population dynamics
• Avian community ecology
• Edge effects and fragmentation
• Landscape ecology
• Behavioural and population ecology of parasitoids

Gilbert Price is a Senior Lecturer in Palaeontology at The University of Queensland. He is a vertebrate palaeoecologist and geochronologist, particularly interested in the evolution and emergence of our planet’s unique ecosystems and fauna, and their response to prehistoric climatic changes. His major research focus has been on the development of palaeoecological models for Australia’s Cenozoic, especially the Quaternary megafauna. Critically, this also involves the production of reliably-dated records for the fossils that he studies. You can follow Gilbert on Twitter (@TheFatWombat) and read his reserach blog at www.diprotodon.com.

Sreekar’s research focuses on using ecological theory to inform conservation decision making. He is interested in a broad range of topics, including spatial conservation planning, evidence-based conservation policy, community assembly rules, extinction synergies, and land-use management. A big question that drives his research is how to address the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. His current research is centred around studying the environmental risks associated with mining and mineral processing.

He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Ecology and has spent the past 15 years at universities across Australia, China, Czechia, India and Singapore. Sreekar is an avid birder and enjoys this aspect of his work both professionally and recreationally.