People

Associate Professor Luke Kelly

Luke is an Associate Professor in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He enjoys contributing solutions to global conservation problems. His research interests are in ecology and evolution, biodiversity conservation and environmental decision making. Much of his work is focused on understanding animal and plant responses to fire, landscape modification and climate change. This includes doing a mix of field experiments, ecological modelling and scenario analysis.

Dr Michelle Gibson

Email: michelle.gibson@unimelb.edu.au

Michelle is a Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. Originally from California, she has worked in Mediterranean ecosystems in the southwest U.S.A. and South Africa’s Cape region conducting research on invasive plants, pollination, and human disturbances on bird communities. Her work in Australia has involved desert bird ecology and measuring effectiveness of restoration actions for Australian woodland birds. She is interested in understanding ecological disturbances and how to conserve and manage resilient ecosystems into the future. Her current research examines the effects of bushfires and planned burning on ecosystem resilience with a focus on avifauna monitoring across diverse ecosystems in Victoria. This project includes working closely with the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Julianna Santos

Email: santos.j@unimelb.edu.au

Julianna completed her PhD in 2024 at the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. She comes from Brazil, where she studied the ecology and conservation of Neotropical mammals, including the population dynamics and diet of wild cats and several invasive species. Her PhD was on the ecology, genetic diversity and population dynamics of small mammals in fire-prone landscapes in southern Australia. Julianna is now a postdoc in the Quantitative and Applied Ecology Group, at University of Melbourne, working on methods to support the implementation of the Red List of Ecosystems and targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Eliza Thompson

Email: elizat2@student.unimelb.edu.au

Eliza is a PhD candidate in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. Her research explores alternative management options to increase the number and diversity of insectivorous birds within forestry plantations and mixed-use landscapes. In partnership with PF Olsen and BirdLife Australia, Eliza is developing field experiments to investigate the benefits of bird diversity in providing pest control and the biodiversity values of commercial forestry plantations. Eliza is also passionate about science communication; you can find her on Twitter (@ElizaKThompson) and Instagram (@elizathompson98).

Takuya Nomura

Email: tnomura@student.unimelb.edu.au

Takuya is undertaking a Master of Ecosystem Management and Conservation in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. He has about 10 years of experience as a consultant in forest management and environmental conservation, with much of that work focused in Asia and including Vietnam, Indonesia and India. His research focuses on developing and comparing ecosystem and biodiversity metrics to assist the private sector in evaluating their ecological footprint, through a case study in South Africa. Takuya is supervised by Prof Emily Nicholson and A/Prof Luke Kelly.

Amanda Lo Cascio

Email: amanda.lo@student.unimelb.edu.au

Amanda completed her PhD in 2024 in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. Her research focused on the distribution and ecology of microbats in stringy-bark woodlands of Victoria. Amanda used a combination of field surveys and genomic techniques to explore the responses of microbats to landscape connectivity, fire regimes and other environmental gradients. Amanda is now a postdoc at Deakin University where she is expanding her research on wildlife ecology and spatial modelling.

Jeremy Johnson

Email: jeremyj2@student.unimelb.edu.au

Jeremy is a PhD student in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. He is proud of his heritage with the Darug people of the Sydney region and currently lives on Wurundjeri Country. Started in 2020, his PhD focuses on how mammals respond to alternative silvicultural systems in the Central Highlands of Victoria. The aim of Jeremy’s work is to promote biodiversity through forest management activities.

Alyssa Brand

Email: ahbrand@student.unimelb.edu.au

Alyssa is currently completing her undergraduate degree, majoring in Ecology, at the University of Melbourne. She is a Research Assistant in the Biodynamos and, in 2024, completed an internship with the group examining rainfall patterns in semi-arid Australia. Alyssa is interested in the fire ecology of mammals and birds, and hopes to pursue these topics in future studies.

Sam Girvan

Email: sgirvan@student.unimelb.edu.au

Sam is a PhD candidate investigating how human pressures combine to threaten native mammals in southern Australia. She is particularly interested in how habitat refuges can buffer mammal populations from modified patterns of fires, climate and invasive predators. Sam will be using a mix of field studies, manipulative experiments and spatial modelling as part of her PhD research.

Emily Grining

Email: egrining@student.unimelb.edu.au

Emily is an honours student in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences. She is investigating the ecology of mammals including agile antechinus, eastern pygmy-possum and bush rat in the heathy dry forests of western Victoria. Emily is particularly interested in exploring methods for detecting and monitoring small mammals, and the role of different survey techniques in building knowledge of mammal distributions in areas that experience bushfires and planned burns. She is proud of her heritage as a Palawa woman and currently lives on Wurundjeri Country.

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES AND RECENT GRADUATES

Ella Plumanns Pouton

Email: e.plumanns@creaf.cat

Ella completed her PhD in 2024 on the impacts of fire regimes, climate, and other environmental drivers on plant diversity in temperate heathlands. She used a combination of field work, glasshouse studies and modelling to disentangle the effects of these drivers and their interactions. Ella is now a postdoc at the Centro de Investigación Ecológica y Aplicaciones Forestales (CREAF) in Spain, where she is working on the impact of “rewilding” in achieving the European Union’s biodiversity and climate goals.

Dr Kate Giljohann

Kate was a Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne from 2017-2022 – and now works at CSIRO Land and Water. She is particularly interested in plants, conservation and the ecology of disturbances. Her research encompasses population, community and landscape-level analyses, with a focus on assisting environmental management. In collaboration with the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Kate developed a suite of models to enhance the evaluation of alternative fire management strategies for biodiversity.

Dr Katharine Senior

Kate was a Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences – and now works as an infectious disease modeller at the Telethon Kids Institute. She is interested in how plants in different ecosystems respond to bushfires and planned burning. Kate completed her PhD as part of the Spatial Solutions Fire Ecology Project, with a focus on using field experiments and models to understanding the impacts of fire on mammals and reptiles in the Murray Mallee region of southern Australia.

Dr Fred Rainsford

Fred is a Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Research Centre for Future Landscapes, and a member of the Spatial Solutions Fire Ecology Project (a collaboration between University of Melbourne and La Trobe University). He is particularly interested in the ecology and conservation of birds. He recently completed his PhD on how fire shapes bird and plant communities in a range of fire-prone ecosystems. His current research focuses on the drivers of bird diversity in agricultural landscapes and woodland ecosystems. This work aims to link farm-scale bird diversity with on-farm natural capital and to develop tools that will lead to more sustainable agricultural practices.

Lily Wheeler

Lily completed her Master of Science (Ecosystem Science) within the School of Ecosystem and Forest Science in 2020 – and his since taken up a PhD in the School. Her research interest is in biodiversity conservation, with a focus on mammal species. In her Masters research Lily investigated how landscape properties shape native small mammal distributions in western Victoria. Her project focused on fire and vegetation properties and Lily hopes to aid biodiversity conservation by better understanding the ecology of common and threatened species.

Isaac Kreger

Isaac completed his Masters of Philosophy (Science) in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences in 2021. He now works in ecosystem restoration in California, USA. Isaac studied how plant traits, such as bark, influence mortality and survival during and after fire. He used plant traits to predict vegetation response to fire and to understand how trees survive in semi-arid landscapes.