The University of Queensland congratulates ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer Dr Kerrie Wilson on being named a finalist in the Australian Museum’s 2013 Eureka Awards for the Outstanding Young Researcher category.
The annual Eureka Prizes reward excellence in the fields of scientific research and innovation, science leadership, school science, and science journalism and communication.
The finalists in this year’s awards program were announced today, and the winners will be announced at the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes Award Dinner on 4 September in Sydney.
Dr Wilson’s conservation research has incorporated ecological dynamics and socio-economics to identify priority areas and actions for conservation, resulting in a new theory for how funds should be allocated.
“My research has revealed how hundreds of millions of dollars of private and public funding could be saved by changing the framework for how decisions are made about protecting biodiversity and restoring habitats,” Dr Wilson said.
“To be named a finalist in this year’s Eureka Prize program is a great endorsement of the innovative investment models that are resulting from collaborative research into global conservation challenges and I am thrilled to be able to bring this issue to light in this way,” she said.
Dr Wilson was chosen as a finalist by a panel of eminent and qualified individuals representing the Eureka Prize partnership between government, education and research institutions, private sector companies, organisations and individuals.
The judging criteria included originality, scientific rigour and potential impacts.
“In the past, many problems in environmental science were neither rigorously defined nor solved,” said Dr Wilson.
“The frameworks and methodologies that I have developed, and continue to develop as part of my Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, incorporate complex issues that have previously been identified as important but not accounted for.
“This includes taking account of socio-economic information, habitat dynamics and ecosystem services, such as carbon storage and sequestration of carbon dioxide.
“As a consequence, my research has informed conservation spending by government and non-government organisations at global, national, and local levels,” Dr Wilson said.
From UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, Dr Wilson is a Chief Investigator and UQ Node Director of the Environmental Decisions Hub (a National Environmental Research Centre, funded with $11 million over four years) and of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions ($12 million over seven years).
Dr Wilson has previously been a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council Linkage Projects grant involving three of Australia’s largest non-government conservation organisations as Linkage Partners: The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society and Greening Australia, from 2009-2012.
Her collaborative research has attracted over $26 million since 2005 and been published in high-level journals including Nature, Science, PLoS Biology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Her research has also led to a seminal review in the New York Academy of Sciences and a co-edited book published by Oxford University Press.
Dr Wilson has also been awarded through the Australian Academy of Science, International Science Linkages Award; Australian Leadership Award; European Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (University of Copenhagen); Norman Wettenhall Foundation Grant; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Fellowship; Daphne Elliott Special Grant, Australian Federation of University Women; NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award; Australian Postgraduate Award with Stipend; Australian Bicentennial Scholarship (Menzies Centre of Australian Studies, London)and a University Medal and Dean’s Commendation for High Achievement from The University of Queensland.
For more information about Dr Wilson’s work visit wilsonconservationecology.com/dr-kerrie-wilson/. Dr Wilson can be contacted on 0432844079.
Media: Karen Gillow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, 0402 674 409 or k.gillow@uq.edu.au. UQ Communications, 07 3346 0561 or communications@uq.edu.au.
