Organising committee
The Victorian Biodiversity Conference is organised by postgraduate students, early-career researchers and professionals from a diverse range of Victorian institutions. If you're interested in joining the team to help with future conferences, feel free to contact us.
The committee for the Victorian Biodiversity Conference 2022 includes:
Jacinta Humphrey (she/her)
La Trobe University
Jacinta is a PhD candidate who studies the birds that share our suburbs. She is investigating the relative influence of housing cover and canopy tree cover on urban bird communities in greater Melbourne.
Alicia Dimovski (she/her)
La Trobe University
Alicia is a PhD candidate investigating the ecological and health consequences of light pollution on Australian mammals. She is also working with lighting engineers to try and produce wildlife-friendly LED lighting that mitigates these impacts.
Emily Scicluna (she/her)
La Trobe University
Millie is a PhD candidate who researches fat-tailed dunnarts of the Victorian basalt grasslands and their threats. She also investigates the morphological and behavioural implications of captive breeding, to assist reintroduction and broader conservation outcomes for Australian threatened marsupials.
Iris Hickman (she/her)
La Trobe University
Iris is a Biological Science student currently investigating future climate change scenarios for alpine shrubs. In particular, she is looking at the variation of alpine shrub traits when protected by snow verses those exposed with low snow cover.
Elodie Camprasse
Deakin University
Elodie recently completed a PhD with the Centre for Integrative Ecology on individual specialisations in seabirds. She now works as a Casual Academic at Deakin University, a Project Manager at the nature connection charity Remember The Wild, and as an Emergency Response Operator at Wildlife Victoria.
Ella Loeffler (she/her)
DELWP
Ella completed her honours in Wildlife Conservation at Deakin University in 2018. She is now a Biodiversity Project Officer at the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.
Maddy Barker (she/her)
DELWP
Maddy completed her Honours in Wildlife Conservation at Deakin University examining non-breeding habitat selection in the threatened shorebird, the Hooded Plover. She is now a graduate at DELWP with rotations in wildlife management, impact assessment and fire.
Ielyzaveta Ivanova
Monash University
Liza is a PhD candidate studying the relative contribution that private protected areas make to Australia’s reserve system, in terms of the biodiversity values protected.
Katherine Berthon
RMIT University
Katie is a PhD candidate using a variety of methods to understand and predict the influence of green space design on plant-insect relationships, to better inform how green spaces can be designed to support biodiversity in cities.
Marco Gutierrez (he/him)
RMIT University
Marco is a PhD candidate investigating how biodiversity and ecosystem services are addressed in strategic environmental assessments, and the opportunities and risks that they present to biodiversity conservation
Christine Connelly
Victoria University
Christine completed her PhD looking at the effects of urbanisation on Eastern Yellow Robins at Deakin University in 2019. She now lectures in Environmental Science at Victoria University. She is an advocate for citizen science, because she loves working with passionate community groups.
