Growing up in suburban Adelaide, I never had any particular hobbies or interests, other than being generally hands-on. Going through high school, as with most people, I still had little idea of what direction I wanted to go – so I took the “I don’t know” option and applied for a BSc at Adelaide Uni.

My two preferences for a major ended up being between mineral geoscience and ecology and spatial science, of which I ended up following through with the latter. A decision I think came from learning GIS as a subject in year 12 geography.

I was convinced that I would never do research and would be leaving university at the end of my three years. I then found myself applying for Honours – but a PhD was definitely out of the question… In the final days of Honours, the night before PhD applications closed, I sat writing the application that has me where I am now.

With rather good timing, a project with Bush Heritage Australia popped up. Being of interest to me, my research is therefore looking at using remote sensing to monitor change in vegetation condition in arid Australian regions for the purpose of conservation. Using Bush Heritage’s South Australian reserves of Bon Bon and Boolcoomatta as study sites, the project aims to develop simple, reliable and cost-effective methods for applying remotely-sensed data for conservation monitoring.