Queensland conservation biologist Kerrie Wilson is a star in her field, and last night she was recognised with a medal to prove it.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions Director Associate Professor Wilson, from The University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences, is one of 17 new Australian Academy of Science (AAS) award winners.
Last month she was awarded with a Prime Minister's Prize for Science – the Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year.
UQ Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Robyn Ward said Dr Wilson’s research had a sustained impact on the natural environment and on human wellbeing.
“Kerrie has developed a highly influential applied research program that brings together world-leading expertise and on-the-ground conservation practitioners,” Professor Ward said.
“Her research program has ranged from the value of natural ecosystems for human wellbeing, management priorities for threatened species such as the orangutan, the regulatory framework for land use and carbon markets, and funding allocation to environmental projects.
“Her research program has facilitated scientific engagement on issues ranging from the value of natural ecosystems for human well-bring, management priorities for threatened species such as the orangutan, the regulatory framework for land use and carbon markets, and funding allocation to environmental projects”.
“Her research in Australia and around the globe has rapidly become a benchmark and exemplar of how problems of environmental management in complex socio-political settings can be rigorously addressed.”
Academy of Science President Professor Andrew Holmes said annual award recipients included Australian scientists addressing some of the world’s most significant challenges – such as antibiotic resistance, the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and a lack of clean drinking water in disaster zones and developing nations.
Their work had led to light-triggered nano-medicine, unbreakable encryption techniques, new methods of carbon capture, and global collaboration in advanced brain imaging.
Professor Holmes said the award winners were from the fields of microbiology, applied mathematics, earth science, materials engineering, astronomy, chemistry, evolutionary biology, fluid dynamics and more.
“The discoveries made by our awardees will change people’s lives,” Professor Holmes said.
The awards will be formally presented at the Academy’s celebration of Australian science, Science at the Shine Dome, in Canberra in May 2017.
Dr Wilson will be presented with the Nancy Millis Medal for Women in Science, which honours the late Professor Nancy Millis AC MBE FAA FTSE, and recognises her importance as a role model for women aspiring to be research leaders.
One of UQ’s most revered academics, Dorothy Hill (1907-1997), is honoured in the AAS’s Dorothy Hill Award, which this year has gone to The University of Tasmania’s Dr Joanne Whittaker, for her work in understanding how the seafloor and ocean basins are formed and evolve through the movements of tectonic plates and the earth’s mantle.
More about the AAS awardees and their research is here.
Media: communications@uq.edu.au, +61 7 3365 1120.
