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Postdoctoral Researcher, Ecosystem Sciences, CSIRO

Dr Sam Nicol is a postdoctoral researcher at CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences and part of the Conservation Decisions Lab.

He is also a member of the National Environmental Research Program (NERP) Environmental Decisions Hub.
Dr Nicol is broadly interested in how we make decisions to allocate resources to conservation projects.
He uses mathematical optimisation tools to find the best way to manage resources over time to achieve a conservation goal.

More technically, this involves looking for the series of management actions that can be taken to achieve some objective with maximum probability.

Dr Nicol uses techniques drawn from operations research and artificial intelligence to solve these problems.
Dr Nicol’s current postdoctoral research involves creating new methods for the adaptive management of ecological networks of endangered and invasive species through space and time.

His current favourite project involves finding the optimal strategy to manage migratory shorebirds on the East Asia-Australasia flyway under uncertainty about the extent and effect of sea level rise.

Experience

  • –present
    Postdoctoral Researcher, Ecosystem Sciences, CSIRO