Our team
CJ Yong - Team leader
It is really the little things in life that make me smile, like running through gnarly trails in the bush, a good coffee brew, pain-au-chocolates and fixing little insignificant problems that no one really cares about. My personal goals in life are to be a better version of my yesterday-self and to be in the top 10% of whatever i do. What inspires me daily is knowing that what i am working on is going to make another living organism have a better future. When i am not working, I like spending my time navigating through natural terrain on bike or foot, going for a surf, being nomadic in the campervan, or just finding new ways to humble myself by learning something new and being an absolute novice.
James Watson - Advisor
I have always been passionate about nature since I started birdwatching as a little boy. I spent my childhood holidays travelling with my family trying to see as many new birds, snakes, mammals, frogs, whatever was on show. Chasing these species allowed me to experience great natural places but also appreciate the enormity of the crisis facing many species and ecosystems. Over the last thirty years I have seen many of the places and species I fell in love with as a child completely altered and lost. This is my driving motivation for conservation. All the science I lead and collaborate on is about understanding what makes biodiversity threatened and what actions can we do that best overcome these threats.
David Pannell - Advisor
Lots of things make me smile, but playing with my grandchildren is high on the list. Things that inspire me include doing research that is intellectually challenging and practically useful, and getting it practically used. Outside of work, my interests lie in music (playing, listening, recording, collecting), golf, reading, and family.
Sayed Md. Iftekhar - Advisor
A/Prof Iftekhar has extensive experience in research, teaching, consultancy, and providing policy advice. He is an applied and environmental economist with substantial expertise in cost-benefit analysis, non-market valuation, impact assessment, mechanism designs, and sustainable management of natural resources. He is the immediate past Secretary of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES). He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Economic Analysis and Policy journal.
Abbie Rogers - Advisor
Dr Abbie Rogers is Co-Director of the UWA Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy (CEEP), and a WA Premier's Mid-Career Fellow in the School of Agriculture & Environment (SAgE) and Oceans Institute.
Through her roles in CEEP, SAgE and the Oceans Institute, Abbie helps to facilitate multidisciplinary research initiatives that will position us towards better conservation, management and sustainable use of our natural environments. Her primary research interests in CEEP are in the application of non-market valuation to estimate community values and preferences for environmental conservation and management, and the extension of this information into associated decision-support tools such as benefit-cost analyses. This includes applications in the context of marine, terrestrial and aquatic environments, with her Fellowship focussed on developing economic tools for coastal management. Ultimately, she is interested in improving the application, understanding and accessibility of environmental economics to improve policy and decision making.
Josie Carwardine - Advisor
Josie is an applied decision scientist in CSIRO Land & Water. Her core interest is in decision making for biodiversity and the sustainable management of our natural world, even when information and resources are limited and people have disparate values. She pursues this by developing and applying prioritisation approaches that combine ecological, economic and social objectives to discover better outcomes for nature and people.
Rebecca Raynal - Team member
I am originally from New Zealand, I moved to Australia in 2009 pursuing a career in events. In 2014 I decided to finish my undergrad studies in Zoology at Western Sydney University. I fell in love with Reptiles (New Zealand doesn’t have many!) and did my Honours with Lisa Schwanz on how colour pattern is inherited in Jacky Dragons. I wanted to continue studying reptiles and fish so I stayed on with Lisa to do my PhD. I have two kids that were born during my PhD. In the future, I hope to continue pursuing a research career and am interested in topics of conservation, evolution and climate change. In my spare time I like teaching my kids about nature and fish keeping.
Ben Walker - Team Member
Many things make me smile, but one of the most important to me is the joy in someone's eyes when they finally learn something new - especially when they have worked on that thing over time. My purpose is driven by three things: curiosity, joy, and wonder. Curiosity to ask and answer new questions of the world and the people around me. Joy in finding out something new or that which was previously unknown. Wonder at the myriad ways that we interact with the world, and how the world interacts with us. Usually you can find me outside walking along the coast or under the canopy of the trees in a national park. If I'm not in these places I like to read in the small courtyard out the front of my home, or you might find me cooking some yummy food for the people around me. Five years is a known-unknown type of time-period. It's close enough that you can see and make decisions for where to be, but far enough to not know if those decisions will work. For my next five years, I will continue to strengthen my research career as a "question-driven" researcher, and the beauty of this goal is that it may involve travel to, and in work in, places across the globe which I have as yet experienced.