Bob Pressey
Bob Pressey

Bob is a Distinguished Professor in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Bob’s research team focuses on spatial solutions to diverse resource management problems, involving the design of conservation areas and applications of a variety of conservation actions. Read Bob’s CV here.

Vanessa Adams
Vanessa M. Adams

Vanessa is a Senior Lecturer in Conservation and Planning at the University of Tasmania. Her research focuses on modelling dynamic social-ecological systems to inform conservation decisions that improve ecosystems and the communities they support. This means her research is broadly aligned with three themes: ecological modelling (to understand dynamic ecosystems, socio-economic aspects of conservation (to understand the human dimensions of social-ecological systems), and conservation decision theory (to inform decision making).

Jon Brodie
Jon E. Brodie

Jon is a Professorial Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Jon is interested in the sources of pollutants in catchments, transport of pollutants to the marine environment, the dispersal of land-based pollutants in coastal and marine environments and the effects of terrestrial pollutants on marine ecosystems. He is involved in policy advice to Australian governments regarding management of water quality issues for the Great Barrier Reef.

Jorge Alvarez-Romero
Jorge G. Álvarez-Romero

Jorge is a Research Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Jorge is interested in improving spatial planning for natural resource use to achieve long-term sustainability and positive outcomes for people and their environment. His research aims to advance systematic conservation planning theory and practice through promoting and improving the integration of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine conservation planning initiatives.

Milena Kim
Milena Kim

Milena is a Research Fellow funded by NESP (Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub) at the University of Western Australia, and Adjunct Researcher at James Cook University. Her research interests include the cultural, social and political dimensions of natural resource management, environmental governance and institutions, and the evaluation of social and environmental initiatives. She has worked with Indigenous people in Brazil, Australia and Fiji.

Alana Grech
Alana Grech

Alana is Assistant Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Her research uses spatial analysis to assess the impact of human activities on coastal and marine ecosystems, and conservation planning to inform and facilitate natural resource management. Alana works in collaboration with ecologists, oceanographers and managers to apply her research to seagrass ecosystems in remote areas of northern Australia, including the Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait, and Gulf of Carpentaria.

Georgina Gurney
Georgina G. Gurney

Georgina is a Research Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Georgina’s research interests lie broadly in understanding the factors that influence opportunities for collaborative management of common-pool natural resources, and the multiple socioeconomic and environmental outcomes of such initiatives.

Rebecca Weeks
Rebecca Weeks

Rebecca is an adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and an independent consultant in conservation planning. Her research focuses on the effective design of locally managed marine area networks, including understanding the relative effectiveness of, and local preferences for, different management strategies; integrating reef fish movement ecology into conservation prioritisation; and resolving social-ecological scale mismatches to effectively scale up local management.

Edmond Sacre
Edmond Sacre

Ed completed his PhD with the Conservation Planning Group at James Cook University in 2019. For his doctorate, he explored how to design protected area networks that maximize conservation impact, focusing on preventing vegetation loss in Queensland, and preventing the loss of fish biodiversity on the coral reefs of Micronesia. He now works as a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and is involved in measuring the connectivity of fish, invertebrate, and aquatic plant populations, and assessing the efficacy of protected areas in the Baltic Sea. He also continues to collaborate with the Conservation Planning Group on projects exploring trade-offs between protecting highly threatened frontier areas versus more remote and less threatened wilderness areas.

Jessica Cheok
Jessica Cheok

 Jessica completed her PhD at James Cook University in 2018 on systematic conservation planning in marine environments, where she examined the sensitivities of the planning framework to aspects of scale. She is currently working on the Global Shark Trends project with Nick Dulvy and the IUCN Shark Specialist Group at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, identifying priority species and areas for shark and ray conservation efforts at regional and global levels. She is also contributing to developing thematic, national, regional, and global Red List Indices for all 1,250 shark and ray species. Jessica is continuing collaboration with Bob Pressey on a project that explores the relationships between the extent of natural resource maps and aspects of resolution (e.g., thematic, spatial), and their implications for conservation planning.

Danielle Asson-Batzel
Danielle Asson-Batzel

Danielle is a PhD candidate supervised by Bob Pressey, Sean Connolly, Tom Bridge, Hugh Sweatman, and Roland Pitcher. Her thesis uses statistical modeling to identify patterns in reef fish and soft-bottom community structure, and how those patterns relate to environmental characteristics on the Great Barrier Reef. She is also investigating the management implications of this research.

Kaylan Carrlson
Kaylan Carrlson

Kaylan is an external PhD student, supervised by Bob Pressey and Vanessa Adams. She works for Ducks Unlimited, an important NGO in the US. Her thesis will focus on conservation planning for wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region and will include analysis of filling and drying cycles, threat assessment, and return-on-investment analysis.

Jess Cramp
Jess Cramp

Jess is an external PhD student supervised by Bob Pressey, Colin Simpfendorfer, and Michelle Heupel. Her thesis will evaluate the effectiveness of large-scale marine reserves for conserving wide-ranging sharks, using a case study of the Cook Islands Shark Sanctuary.

Jon Day
Jon Day

Jon was an Australian protected area planner and manager for 39 years; 28 years were in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park until his retirement in 2014. Jon is currently undertaking a post-career PhD titled ‘Planning and managing the Great Barrier Reef – lessons learned for the future planning of the Reef and implications for MPAs elsewhere’; this is being jointly supervised by Bob Pressey and Helene Marsh.

Jeremy Horowitz
Jeremy Horowitz

Jeremy is a PhD candidate supervised by Tom Bridge, Bob Pressey, and Julian Caley. His research uses black corals as a model system to investigate how drivers of speciation change in both vertical and horizontal dimensions, and the implications for conservation of these less considered, deep habitats.

Meira Mizrahi
Meira Mizrahi

Meira is an external PhD student supervised by Amy Diedrich, Bob Pressey and Rebecca Weeks. Her thesis focuses on assessing the biophysical and social impact of marine protected areas.

Patrick Smallhorn-West
Patrick Smallhorn-West

Patrick is a Canadian postdoctoral research fellow James Cook University and WorldFish, and a National Geographic Early Career Leader. His work focuses on the impacts of local marine management, particularly in the South Pacific. He is also interested in identifying optimal management strategies to balance both biodiversity conservation and sustainable use

Jeremy Raynal
Jeremy Raynal

Jeremy is interested in approaches to coastal marine ecosystem conservation that consider human needs for natural resources. He has been particularly focused on subsistence and culturally important fisheries and how fishers can contribute to conservation in varying international contexts. His PhD research applies social and ecological approaches to investigate roles of recreational fishers in ecosystem-scale conservation efforts. Jeremy’s advisors include Bob Pressey and Rebecca Weeks at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and Marcus Sheaves and Adam Barnett from the College of Science and Engineering at James Cook University. Jeremy changed to a part-time PhD candidature in early 2020 to take a position with the US Fish and Wildlife Service as Biologist on the Aquatic Conservation Team at the Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Stacy Bierwagen
Stacy Bierwagen

Stacy completed her BSc in Miami, FL at Barry University majoring in the biological sciences with a marine specialisation. She then completed an MSc in 2014 in Conservation Biology and Environmental Science at the University of Hawaii. She went on to working for the State of Hawaii supervising field-based surveys in coral bleaching, invasive algae proliferation, and reef damage resulting from ship groundings. She moved to Australia in 2015 to pursue doctorate at JCU and has recently completed her PhD thesis in addressing functional roles of reef sharks on the Great Barrier Reef at the Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture. Stacy is using her advanced skills in spatial analysis to work with Bob Pressey on the historical develpment of the Queensland protected area system, including biases in protection related to extractive uses.

Katie Sambrook

Katie’s PhD research is based in Papua New Guinea, where many island communities are dependent on coral reef fisheries as a source of protein and income. Through her research, she aims to better understand how coral reef fishes use the wider seascape surrounding reefs, and how the spatial composition and configuration of shallow-water habitats can influence the patterns and processes that we see on coral reefs. She is currently working with Bob Pressey on a major literature review, complemented by novel empirical analyses, to demonstrate and understand residual tendencies in the locations of protected areas, globally and across Queensland.

Alumni

  • Glenn Almany was Assistant Professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
  • Adrian Arias develops and manages Oceans 5 projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  • Amélie A. Augé is a Researcher with New Zealand Department of Conservation.
  • Natalie Ban is an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria.
  • Stephen Ban is a Spatial Analysis Manager at Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society of British Columbia.
  • Tom Brewer is a Research Fellow with ANCORS at the University of Wollongong.
  • Jana Brotánková is a Faculty Member at the Czech Technical University in Prague.
  • Adriana Chacón is a Senior Researcher with CINDE – Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency.
  • Brayden Cockerell
  • Ian Craigie is the Principal of Craigie Financial Planning.
  • Debora De Freitas is an Assistant Professor at the State University of São Paulo (UNESP)-Campus Litoral Paulista.
  • Rodolphe Devillers is a Research Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
  • Kerrie Fraser is a Senior Conservation Officer in the Marine Protected Area Policy team within the Queensland Department of Environment and Science.
  • Mariana Fuentes is an Assistant Professor at Florida State University.
  • Tatjana Good is a Yoga Instructor at the The Yoga and Fitness Studio.
  • Luiz Guilherme dos Santos Ribas is doing his PhD in Ecology and Evolution at the Ecology Department of the Universidade Federal de Goiás.
  • Steve Hall is a GIS Analyst at Abzeco Ecological Consultants in Victoria.
  • Mélanie A. Hamel is a casual GIS teacher at Murdoch University, a Research Consultant, and an Adjunct Research Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
  • Stephanie Januchowski-Hartley is a Sêr Cymru Fellow at Swansea University and an Associate Editor for British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology and People and Nature.
  • Christina Hicks is a Professor in the Political Ecology group at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre.
  • Vera Horigue is a Research Fellow at the University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute.
  • Johnathan Kool is a Researcher in the Australian Antarctic Division.
  • Rafael Magris is an Environmental Analyst at the Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade.
  • Madeleine McKinnon is the Founder and Principal of science-based consultancy organisation Bright Impact.
  • Mirjam Maughan is a Senior Natural Resource Management Officer at Department of Natural Resources and Mines (Queensland).
  • Morena Mills is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Social Science at Imperial College London.
  • Ben Reid is a Principal Planner at Transport for NSW.
  • April Reside is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland.
  • Anderson Cassio Sevilha works at Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária.
  • Fernanda Terra Stori works as a Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Marine and Renewable Energy in Ireland.
  • Casper Van De Geer is a Manager at Local Ocean Trust.
  • Raísa Vieira is a Researcher at the International Institute for Sustainability in Brazil.
  • Piero Visconti is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research at University College London.
  • Pete Waldie is a Researcher with The Nature Conservancy.
  • Melissa Walsh is a Researcher & Consultant with Marine Conservation Finance Consulting.
  • Heather Welch is a Research Associate at University of California, Santa Cruz and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  • Amelia Wenger is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland.