Speakers

Prof. Robert Poulin

Zoology Dept, University of Otago, New Zealand

https://www.otago.ac.nz/parasitegroup/home.html

Originally from Canada, Robert obtained degrees from McGill University and Laval University, before joining the University of Otago in 1992. He has since established a research programme in parasite ecology and evolution with three main goals: (i) exploring large-scale patterns and processes in parasite biodiversity and biogeography; (ii) quantifying how parasites interact with climate change to affect diversity and food web stability in aquatic ecosystems; (iii) testing the role of parasite microbiomes in shaping host-parasite interactions. Robert was awarded Otago University’s Distinguished Research Medal (2013), the Hutton Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand (2011), the Wardle Medal from the Canadian Society of Zoologists (2007), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2001.

Professor Madeleine van Oppen

Professor Madeleine van Oppen is an ecological geneticist with an interest in microbial symbioses and climate change adaptation of reef corals. Her work has been published in >200 peer reviewed papers and book chapters. Her early career focused on evolutionary and population genetics of algae and fish, and subsequently corals. She obtained a PhD in the molecular ecology of macroalgae in 1995 (U Groningen, Netherlands) and is currently an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow with part positions at the University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Her team is using bioengineering approaches aimed at increasing coral climate resilience and the likelihood that coral reefs will survive this century. These interventions include coral host hybridisation and conditioning, bacterial probiotics and directed evolution of microalgal symbionts.

Moriaki Yasuhara

Moriaki Yasuhara is an associate professor of environmental science in the School of Biological Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science at the University of Hong Kong. He has broad interests in integrating organismal biology (ecology and evolutionary biology), paleontology, and paleoceanography/paleoclimatology, especially by using highly resolved micropalaeontological records. His recent research has focused on the spatio-temporal dynamics of large-scale biodiversity patterns, the impact of climate on species diversity, and the controlling factor(s) of biodiversity pattern/change in deep-sea, shallow-marine and pelagic ecosystems. He is also interested in microfossil-based conservation palaeobiology and palaeontology of the Ostracoda in general.

Website: https://moriakiyasuhara.com/
Twitter: @DrMoriartyY

Steve Gaines

Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California

Steve Gaines is Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a marine ecologist who seeks conservation solutions by linking innovations in ocean science to more effective marine policy and management. He has over 260 publications, including 4 books. His science explores the design of marine reserve networks, climate change impacts on ocean ecosystems, sustainable fisheries management using market based reforms, and the role of aquaculture in meeting the future demand for food. In each of these science endeavors, he has been a strong promotor of more effective communication of ocean science to enhance its impact, and he has championed the power of interdisciplinary teams to tackle environmental challenges in novel ways.

Steve holds a PhD from Oregon State University. He has been awarded a Pew Fellowship, the inaugural Marc Hirshman Award for excellence in student mentoring, a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, and the Peter Benchley Prize for Ocean Science. His collaborative work on sustainable fisheries was named a top scientific contribution of 2008 by the journal Nature.

Aulani Wilheim

Aulani Wilhelm is the Senior Vice President for Oceans at Conservation International. Her work bridges culture, community, and science to emerge innovations in ocean conservation. She has played a pivotal role in shaping the emerging field of large-scale ocean conservation, leading the design and establishment of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaiʻi, and as founder of Big Ocean, a network of the world’s largest marine managed areas which collectively protect >11 million km²of ocean globally.

Prior to joining Conservation International, she was Director of Ocean Initiatives for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and a Social Innovation Fellow at Stanford University. She founded Island Water, a social venture to provide clean water and reduce plastic pollution on islands, and the Design4Nature Collective, a network of professionals trained in methods of design thinking who modify and apply those methods to problem solving for nature.

She holds a BA from the University of Southern California and MS from Stanford University.

https://www.conservation.org/about/center-for-oceans

Maria Dornelas

Maria Dornelas is a macroecologist who studies biodiversity change across the planet. She is Deputy Director of the Centre for Biological Diversity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She is originally from Portugal and started her scientific career studying mangroves in Mozambique and coral reefs in Australia (2006 James Cook University). Her research is at the interface between ecological theory, ecoinformatics and the development of empirical approaches to understand how biodiversity changes in space and time. She is interested in the effects of scale on biodiversity, and work in her lab spans mm scale interactions on a coral reef, to biodiversity time series across the entire planet.

Website: http://synergy.st-andrews.ac.uk/diversity/dr-maria-dornelas/
Twitter: @maadornelas

Graham Edgar

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania

Graham Edgar’s research interests in ecology and conservation extend over 35 years. They include assessment of threats to marine biodiversity, ecology of seaweed- and seagrass-associated fauna, taxonomy of crustaceans and fishes, and clarification of metabolic-based regularities in communities. Graham’s career history includes periods as Director of Marine Research at the Charles Darwin Research Station (Galapagos Islands), Senior Fulbright Fellow in Washington (USA), and JSPS Fellow in Amakusa (Japan). Current interests include expansion of the citizen science Reef Life Survey program, eDNA, overlooked threatened marine species, and demonstration that field studies with broad generality can be conducted across very large spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales at low cost.  

Website: https://www.utas.edu.au/profiles/staff/imas/graham-edgar

Twitter: @gedgar33

Professor Steve Hawkins

Emeritus Professor of Natural Sciences, Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton and Lankester Fellow at the Marine Biological Association (MBA) of the UK

Steve is from SW England, studied Marine Biology (BSc Liverpool, 1973-1979) followed by a PhD on rocky shore ecology at the Port Erin Marine Laboratory (Isle of Man) before a Fellowship at the MBA, Plymouth. He then lectured at Manchester (1980), and Port Erin (1987), being promoted to Professor at Southampton (1995 – Director Centre for Environmental Sciences also Head Biodiversity and Ecology Division). In 1999 he was seconded to the MBA as Director, where he restarted many of the MBA’s classic time-series.  He then was Head, College of Natural Sciences, Bangor (2007), returning to Southampton as Dean of Natural and Environmental Sciences (2010-2015, Emeritus from 2017).  He is an experimental rocky shore ecologist, also working on biogeography, shellfisheries, pollution, MPAs, disused-dock restoration, and ecology of sea-defences. For 40 years he has made observations to understand biodiversity responses to climate change, plus interactions with regional and local scale impacts. He has  >300 publications including 2 books. He was awarded the junior prize in 1995 of the Ecology Institute Germany (Honorary Director since 2017), a POGO Professorship to Argentina (2010), lifetime achievement from ITRS (2011), a NUS, Singapore Society Professorship (2016/2017) and Erskine Fellowships at Canterbury, NZ (2017, 2021).