Associate Professor
University of Auckland, New Zealand
I am interested in plant responses to climatic conditions and the impacts of climate change on biodiversity more broadly. I completed my undergraduate and PhD degrees in Sydney and then worked as a research fellow on several projects until mid 2010 when I moved to Auckland with my family. I had various roles in the School of Environment before joining the School of Biological Sciences as Lecturer in Ecology in February 2015. At the end of 2015, I was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/research/re-research-at-auckland/rutherford-discovery-fellows-2015.html) by the Royal Society of New Zealand. My research interests are centred around understanding plant functional responses to environmental conditions, particularly extreme events such as drought. I have used measurement and modelling approaches to investigate the hourly, daily, seasonal and annual patterns in tree water use at leaf and stand scales. I am a Principal Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini (http://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/) and Academic Group Lead for the Ecological and Evolutionary Biology group in the School of Biological Sciences.