Researcher biography

Helen's research interests are in both biodiversity conservation and human health, and how these fields could coordinate to achieve mutual gains for people and the environment. Her aim is to facilitate evidence-based decisions in these fields by making data modelling and decisions science more accessible to decision-makers. Her research at CBCS focuses on working with species' experts within the New South Wales Government, using a structured elicitation approach to estimate species response to management for use in both species management planning and biodiversity offsets evaluation. Helen is also working as part of team conducting a review on the effectiveness of management actions for Australian woodland birds. Her recent work in eco-epidemiology, through Australian National University, has focused on using different modelling methods (such as Bayesian networks and geographically weighted regression) for evaluating the risk of infectious diseases in the Pacific. As part of her research in public health, she has made several trips to Samoa to help coordinate community-based surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of their elimination program for lymphatic filariasis. This field work has also provided her the opportunity to look at the use of machine learning and geo-statistics for predicting disease hotspots.