Our Team
It is early days in the FSP’s development and the team will expand within and beyond CSIRO. For now, we have a team working across five CSIRO Business Units:
Valuing Sustainability FSP Team
Dr Peat Leith
- Peat leads CSIRO’s Valuing Sustainability Future Science Platform and is project lead for the Sustainability Science Scaffolding Project. His research background as a social scientist in natural resource management across marine and coastal zone management, agriculture has focussed on how science can effectively underpin sustainability outcomes.
Dr Catherine Robinson
- Cathy Robinson is the project lead for the Valuing Local Provenance which focuses on how to support locally defined co-benefits into emerging sustainability markets. Cathy’s research as a social and sustainability scientist has been applied through a range of Indigenous-led initiatives that show how to accelerate innovation with ideas that empower Indigenous knowledge, on-country enterprises and communities.
Dr Lynne Macdonald
- As a soil scientists Lynne’s research focuses on developing tools and metrics to support resilient and sustainable land management, with particular interest in soil carbon stocks, flows, and associated biological functions. On the FSP leadership team she represents the agri-food arena and leads a project seeking to improve the value of soil indicators.
Dr Becky Schmidt
- Becky Schmidt is a Principal Environmental Scientist in CSIRO Land and Water, leading interdisciplinary research in natural capital assessments and environmental-economic accounting. She is Integration Lead across the whole FSP; Project Leader for the Functional Ecosystems for Nature-positive Prosperity project; and contributes to the Sustainability Science Scaffolding and Future States projects.
Emily Knauth
- Emily is the Research Projects Manager for the VS FSP with broad experience including in program and operations management in science organisations. She is also part of the FSP leadership team.
Dr Michael Battaglia
- Michael is is chair of the VS FSP steering committee; involved in mobilising science and technology for sustainability transitions; associated with Transitions Project. Michael leads CSIRO’s Towards Net Zero mission which is targeted at lifting Australia’s capability to support Net Zero goals in hard-to-abate industry value chains and regions. The mission connects partners across industry, innovation system, governments, communities and within CSIRO’s business units to build and coordinate innovation capacity to accelerate progress towards Net Zero goals.
Dr Louise Fisher
- Louise is a steering committee member of the VS FSP and Science Director of CSIRO’s Minerals Resources Business Unit.
Dr Jen Taylor
- Jen is a steering committee member of the VS FSP and Science Director of CSIRO’s Agriculture & Food Business Unit.
Dr Brett Molony
- Brett is a VS FSP steering committee member, and is Deputy Director & Science Director, Oceans & Atmosphere (CSIRO). Brett has more than 30 years of experience as a marine, estuarine and freshwater researcher within Australia and Internationally.
Dr Paul Bertsch
- Paul is a VS FSP steering committee member, and is Science Director, Land & Water (CSIRO). Dr Bertsch has 30 years of experience in the fields of soil science, environmental geochemistry, environmental toxicology and hydrobiogeochemistry.
Dr Jess Melbourne-Thomas
- Jess Melbourne-Thomas is the project lead for the Resilience + sustainability of socio-ecological networks project and is leading the marine component of the Future States project. Her research background is in ecosystem modelling and climate change science, with an increasing focus on connecting science, policy and practice through her roles as a knowledge broker and transdisciplinary researcher.
Dr Nicky Grigg
- Nicky works on interdisciplinary projects concerned with anticipating, understanding and adapting to environmental and social change to meet diverse stakeholder values. She brings experience in mathematical modelling and quantitative and qualitative analysis methods for working in complex social-ecological systems. She will be part of the project teams for Functional Ecosystems project, and leading the Navigating Transitions project.
Dr Andrew Reeson
- Dr Andrew Reeson is an economist interested in the social and economic impacts of technology. He is leading the knowledge commons project investigating how sustainably knowledge can be efficiently and equitably shared.
Katie Ricketts
- Katie Ricketts is an economist interested in how individuals and firms navigate markets and institutions and how these systems govern behaviour and drive decision-making. Within the VS FSP, Katie is interested in identifying and identify new methods of co-creating co-benefits with rural and indigenous communities and better understanding how these benefits might be valued, realised, altered or distorted by other users and market actors.
Dr Anna Richards
- Anna leads the Future States project in the Valuing Sustainability FSP. She applies frameworks and models to better understand and manage ecosystems both now and in the future.
Dr Esther Onyango
- Dr Esther Achieng Onyango is an interdisciplinary systems scientist with an interest in the connections between human and environmental health. Dr Onyango’s work defines her as a holistic thinker, taking a Planetary Health approach to determine drivers of human health risks in linked socio-ecological systems in the context of global stressors such as climate change. She draws on extensive career experience spanning industry, academia, policy, private sector, and inter-governmental organisations in developed and developing countries to identify drivers of risks and interventions for just sustainability transitions that protect human and ecosystem health.
Dr Rebecca Riggs
- Rebecca is a sustainability scientist working on the Navigating Sustainability Transitions project. Her research seeks to understand systemic barriers and enablers of transformative change and co-develop pathways towards improved governance systems. Rebecca’s work with the FSP is focused on critical minerals, using value-centred approaches to strengthen capabilities and agency for a just sustainability transition.
Dr Claudia Munera-Roldan
- Claudia Munera-Roldan is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner. Her work and research focus on the interface science-policy-practice in environmental governance arrangements, co-production, and futures. Claudia is applying future-oriented approaches, exploring options towards strategic thinking and collective learning to navigate global changes, considering the linkages between local communities, private and public sector initiatives to find options towards sustainable futures.
Dr Emma Ligtermoet
- I am a human-environment geographer interested in understanding how people navigate social-ecological change, with research experience in human-aquatic systems, remote and urban Indigenous cultural and natural resource management, climate adaptation and urban greening. In the VS FSP, I am examining the diverse contexts in which the co-production of knowledge occurs, and how plural and changing knowledge systems contribute to driving innovation for sustainability.
Dr Delphi Ward
- Delphi is interested in understanding how interactions and feedbacks at different scales shape emergent socio-ecological system states, and how these could be made more sustainable. Delphi has developed and applied a range of approaches for predicting, characterizing and detecting ecological regime shifts. In this role, Delphi will focus on developing processes and tools to support adaptation of socio-ecological systems towards greater sustainability and resilience, using a marine case study. She will combine knowledge co-production and ensemble modelling to explore interactions between tipping points and thresholds, forecast future socio-ecological system states and develop indicators to support decision-making.
Dr Roshni Subramaniam
- Roshni is interested in understanding how complex systems, like ecosystems, operate. Her research has primarily focused on exploring external impacts to marine ecosystems and within the VS FSP, she is expanding her focus by investigating how we can build resilient and sustainable seafood supply networks to better prepare for disruption.
Dr Kim Zoeller
- Kim is an interdisciplinary scientist, with specific expertise in assessing how important interactions at different levels of ecological and social organisation contributes to human wellbeing and fosters support for conservation and other forms of nature stewardship. As a postdoctoral fellow for the Functional Ecosystems project, Kim seeks to investigate the social-ecological context for ecosystem function indicators.
Dr Gillian Cornish
- As a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Knowledge Commons project, Gillian will be investigating the institutions that shape sustainability knowledge. Gillian has a background in human geography with a strong focus in urban studies, sustainable livelihoods and social capital.
Dr Bernardo Cantone
- Bernardo is a Postdoctoral Fellow involved in the Knowledge Commons Project.
Dr Katrina Szetey
- Katrina’s research to date has extended from quantitative ecology through to sustainability science encompassing scenario development and participatory systems modelling. In the Future States project, she will be co-developing state and transition models with stakeholders to understand the types of socio-ecological landscapes that might result from change, what the thresholds for that change are, and how close any potential change is.
Dr Sarah Luxton
- Dr Sarah Luxton is a postdoctoral fellow and part of the Functional Ecosystem project, which seeks to co-develop trusted, accessible and socially relevant ecosystem function indicators for regional communities. She has seven years’ experience in vegetation mapping, modelling, and condition assessment. Her PhD focused on modelling hydrological refugia across the Jarrah Forests of southwestern Australia, where she gained skills in the analysis of large, spatial, vegetation datasets. She then spent three years working across the tropical and semi-arid region of Northern Australia in field-based roles. Prior to undertaking her PhD, she worked for the West Australian State Government in administrative positions, and as a wool handler and classer in regional WA. Sarah is also an Associate Editor for the Australian Journal of Botany and a member of the Australian Vegetation Classification Research Chapter.
Dr Erinne Stirling
- Erinne is a postdoctoral fellow currently working in leading indicators for soil health. Previous work includes exploring the role of diurnal redox conditions on rhizosphere microbial and viral communities, nutrient cycling in fire affected forests, and the role of soil microbes during wetland drought periods.
Dr Nikki Dumbrell
- Nikki is a postdoctoral fellow working on the ‘Valuing local provenance and place-based economies in natural capital and low carbon markets and industries’ project. Nikki’s research in natural resource economics has been concerned with market failure and identifying policies or (dis)incentives to encourage more sustainable resource use decisions.
Dr Sabrina Chakori
- Sabrina is an ecological economist, passionate educator and social entrepreneur. Sabrina’s research explores systemic barriers to and enablers of equitable sustainability transitions. Her work seeks co-develop new capacities for navigating contested, complex and uncertain futures, and to propose innovative socio-economic sustainability pathways. Her key research areas include circular economy, food systems sustainability, social entrepreneurship, degrowth transitions.
Dr Danilo Urzedo
- Danilo is a human geographer and a Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO, working on the Valuing Sustainability Future Science Platform. His research draws on multiple perspectives of political ecology and science and technology studies to investigate how the intersection of digital innovations and environmental justice influences knowledge coproduction and governance systems.
Lisa Walker
- Lisa is a social scientist with a background in program monitoring, evaluation and sustainable development. She is currently working with the Valuing Sustainability Future Science Platform to develop and implement the whole of FSP evaluation. Lisa is also a member of the Local Provenance project team.
Dr Aysha Fleming
- Aysha will be working with the resilience postdoc led by Jess Melbourne-Thomas. She is a social scientist interested in behaviour change for environmental sustainability and climate adaptation.
Dr Gabriela Scheufele
- Gabriela is a marine resource economist with a focus on market and non-market economic valuation. She will be an advisor within the FSP ‘Valuing Sustainability’.
Dr Beth Fulton
- Beth is a mathematician and ecologist who has used models of our oceans and what’s in them to look at sustainability and climate change for the last twenty years. She will be part of the projects looking at the resilience and tipping points in socioecological systems (basically what will our world look like and how do we make it as safe and desirable as possible).
Dr Rowan Trebilco
- Rowan uses his expertese in marine systems ecology and natural resource management to support sustainable management of marine social-ecological systems. He leads the marine ecosystem modelling and assessment team CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere’s Coasts & Ocean research program and is involved in the Future States and Reslience+ VS FSP projects.
Dr Anthony O’Grady
- Anthony leads the landscape and forest function team. He has a background in plant physiology and ecohydrology. More recently has been involved in the development of enterprise scale natural capital accounts and their use to enable adoption of sustainability.
Dr Fabio Boschetti
- Fabio is an applied mathematician. Not a specialist, but one with a fairly broad knowledge in different areas. For several years his work has focused on geoscientific applications. He now works in Complex System Science and applies his work to Ecological Modelling, Management of Natural Resources and Decision Making. Fabio is part of the Resilience Plus project team.
Dr Taryn Kong
- Taryn applies thinking and approaches in cross-cultural participatory research, environmental sciences and business finance to integrate local knowledge in addressing sustainability issues. She collaborates with the team on valuing local provenance in the FSP.
Dr Kristen Williams
- Kristen specialises in the integration of ecosystem and landscape sciences to generate data and knowledge products informing systems of ecologically sustainable land management. She is the natural systems ecology activity co-lead with Dr Suzanne Prober, collaborating with colleagues to establish socially-relevant indicators of ecosystem function in the Functional Ecosystems for Nature-positive Prosperity project led by Dr Becky Schmidt. The natural systems ecology activity works closely with the Future States project led by Dr Anna Richards.
Dr Suzanne Prober
- Suzanne’s research aims to facilitate effective management and restoration of Australian ecosystems, including a focus on adaptation of biodiversity and ecosystems to climate change. She is the natural systems ecology activity co-lead with Dr Kristen Williams, collaborating with colleagues to establish socially-relevant indicators of ecosystem function in the Functional Ecosystems for Nature-positive Prosperity project led by Dr Becky Schmidt. She also contributes to the Future States project led by Dr Anna Richards.
Alice Margiolas
- Alice provides administrative support to the FSP.
Dr Jodie Van de Kamp
- Jodie is a research scientist involved in the Functional Ecosystems project. For the past 10 years Jodie’s research has been focussed in the marine environment, specifically, the use of metagenomics for the study of microbial ecology and it’s utility for ecological monitoring, particularly in coastal systems, in relation to anthropogenic impacts and determining long-term trends in ocean health.
Dr Greg Smith
- Greg is an environment economist and multidiscipline collaborator and is a project team member for the Functional Ecosystems project. Greg integrates environmental and economic research to help decision-makers in government and industry incorporate the value of natural capital and ecosystem services into their decisions.
Dr Simon Ferrier
- Greg is a senior research scientist involved in the Functional Ecosystems project.
Dr Rebecca Pirzl
- Rebecca has a wealth of experience in cross-cutting roles that she brings to the Functional Ecosystems project.
Dr Don Gaydon
- Don is a Principal Research Scientist involved in the Functional Ecosystems project. Don’s research is focused on helping farmers increase water productivity and manage climatic risk in Australian and South Asian cropping systems.
Dr Petra Kuhnert
- Petra is a Statistician working on a wide range of environmental problems. She has a PhD in applied statistics, focussing more recently on the development of methods at the intersection between statistics and machine learning to develop more informative predictions for risk based decision-making. She will be adopting this skill set to identify ways in which data, methods and models can be used in a hybrid fashion to inform environmental processes being used in the Valuing Sustainability FSP.
Dr Joel Dabrowski
- Joel is part of the Future States project team. His key research areas are machine learning and probabilistic modelling in time series problems.
Derek Fulton
- Derek is part of the Future States project team.
Dr Éva Plagányi-Lloyd
- Dr Éva Plagányi-Lloyd is a senior principal research scientist with over 20 years experience modelling and working with fisheries and marine ecosystem sustainability, including supply chains.
Dr Adam Liedloff
- Dr Adam Liedloff is an ecologist with 18 years experience in ecological modelling in northern Australia. Adam is part of the Future States project team.
Dr Sarina Macfadyen
- Sarina is passionate about using research findings to help develop management options for farmers that improve the sustainability and profitability of their farms. Sarina is part of the Future States project team.
Dr Cara Stitzlein
- Cara is part of the Knowledge Commons project team. Her strengths are in applying human-centred design methodologies for purposes of development, evaluation and performance benchmarking.
Dr David Evans
- David is part of the Knowledge Commons project team and a Senior Experimental Scientist in CSIRO’s Data61.
Dr Simon Fielke
- Simon studies processes of socio-technical innovation in rural and agricultural sectors, and works in the knowledge commons project.
Dr Justine Murray
- Dr Justine Murray is a landscape ecologist with skills in expert elicitation and species distribution modelling. Justine is part of the Local Provenance project team.
Dr Nina Welti
- Nina’s work aims to improve the return of value to Australian producers and improve the trust of agricultural supply chains, by improving the measurement, monitoring and transparency of Australian agricultural supply chains. Nina is part of the Local Provenance project team.
Dr Larelle Macmillan
- Larelle is part of the Local Provenance project team; bringing her experience in monitoring, evaluation and learning and complex system change to the living labs process.
Dr Kristina Fisher
- Kristina is part of the Local Provenance project team.
Jeda Palmer
- Jeda’s research is focused on promoting a more sustainable relationship between the environment and food production. Jeda is part of the Local Provenance project team.
Dr Daniel Mendham
- Daniel is a Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO’s Land & Water. Daniel is part of the Navigating Transitions project team.
Dr Libby Pinkard
- Dr Libby Pinkard has a background in tree physiology that she applies to developing tools and approaches for quantifying the risks and impacts of environmental stress and pests on forest function and condition. Libby’s recent work focuses on the application of natural capital accounting to primary enterprises to improve environmental outcomes from private land. Libby is part of the Navigating Transitions project team.
Dr Andy Hall
- Andy Hall is a science and technology policy analyst with a specialization in the study and design of agriculture innovation processes, policies and practices. Andy is part of the Navigating Transitions and Sustainability Science Scaffolding project teams.
Dr Stuart Whitten
- Dr Whitten is an applied economic researcher with a track record of contributing to Australia’s most pressing environmental issues including biodiversity, natural capital, Great Barrier Reef management, and the economic impacts and opportunities of a changing climate. A key challenge in addressing these issues is navigating the transition towards more sustainable futures which is his focus in the FSP.
Dr Andy Wilkins
- I’m an applied mathematician, working on problems ranging from mining to the environment, from hydrogen to mosquitoes.
Dr Rebecca Stutz
- Rebecca is a Research Scientist in CSIRO’s Agriculture & Food business unit. Rebecca is part of the Navigating Transitions project team.
Jody Bruce
- Jody is part of the Navigating Transitions project team.
Dr Tira Foran
- Tira is a team member in the Navigating Transitions project. His research interests relate to collaboration and contestation in the planning and negotiation of regional futures, and the role of knowledge co-production in such transitions.
Dr Peggy Schrobback
- Peggy is part of the Resilience+ project team and will be involved in developing indicators for seafood supply chain resilience.
Zaynel Sushil
- Zaynel is an impact entrepreneur and strategist with a track record of launching and scaling social enterprises. Zaynel is part of the Sustainability Science Scaffolding project team.