About

Research interests

As a landscape ecologist my research focuses on land-atmosphere interactions, carbon and water cycling, and ecosystem responses to climate change and disturbances. I lead the Atmospheric Ecosystem Research & Observation (AERO) lab at the University of Technology Sydney, which utilizes advanced techniques like eddy covariance flux measurements, remote sensing, and data-model integration to explore how ecosystems respond to climate change, extreme weather, and disturbances. Most of our lab’s field-based research projects are conducted in semi-arid woodlands at the Alice Springs Mulga and Ti Tree East flux towers in central Australia, but we also work in the temperate forests of south-eastern Australia and in Sydney’s buzzing urban neighbourhoods. Our research informs sustainable strategies for climate adaptation to manage forests, semi arid and urban ecosystems and we closely collaborate with industry partners and government agencies, including Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, NSW Health, NSW Rural Fire Service, and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.  

Short bio

I completed my undergraduate studies in Physical Geography at the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2011 and my PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2016 and worked as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in flux and fire ecology at Western Sydney University in the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment from 2016-2023. In October 2023 I joined UTS as a lecturer in Environmental Biology and coordinate Nature and Evolution (a first year subject) and teach into Biodiversity Conservation and Plant Physiology and Climate Change. I greatly enjoy mentoring of students and early career researchers, and co-organise a mentoring program for HDR students the Faculty of Science that connects our next generation of researchers with early/mid career academics. I’m supervising Honours, Master’s and PhD students, am an editor at Critical Insights in Plant Sciences (CiPS), a regular reviewer for the ARC and Q1 journals, and have published over 40 journal articles, book chapters and multiple data sets in network-coordinated data repositories.

The AERO lab is currently recruiting Honours, Master’s and PhD students! If you are interested in carbon, water and energy cycling in semi-arid ecosystems or in working on Environmental Health in urban environments then get in touch with me!

You can find further details about our lab’s past and current research projects here, find me on Researchgate, GoogleScholar or download my CV below: