New ACEMS Partner Investigators Announced

ACEMS is excited to welcome three new Partner Investigators as ACEMS Members. They are Dr Juan Ortiz from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS), Dr Petra Kuhnert from CSIRO, and Dr Anders Holmberg from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Juan Ortiz is an ecologist and ecosystem modeller that has specialised in the interface between coral physiology, coral symbiosis, population community and ecosystem ecology. He is particularly interested in the effect of anthropogenic disturbances on marine ecosystems and is motivated by the pressing need for applied, ecologically sound, scientific research that provides the necessary information to understand and design strategies to preserve tropical marine ecosystem functioning. Over the past 5 years, Juan has built strong ties with the organisations in charge of the management of the Great Barrier Reef. These ties have helped him to translate the most recent ecological findings on GBR functioning into management actions.

Petra Kuhnert is a Research Statistician in Data61. Her most recent research interests are focused on managing model uncertainty and its communication for decision making. She is the Activity Leader for the Hybrid Model Prediction Activity in the newly formed Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Future Science Platform in CSIRO and is interested in novel approaches for integrating Statistics with machine learning.

Anders Holmberg joined the ABS in September 2019 as the Chief Methodologist. Anders has a background as a survey methodologist, developing both theory and practice within data collection methodology, survey sampling theory and register based statistical methods. Immediately prior to joining the ABS, Anders was the Chief Methodologist at Statistics Norway. He was also the Principal Statistician at Statistics New Zealand from 2014 to 2016, where he worked with traditional censuses and administrative data systems. In 2012-13, Anders was responsible for the management of the Cambodian Socio-Economic Survey, as well as training staff throughout the statistical value chain. He enjoyed a 13 year career at Statistics Sweden (1999-2012), undertaking a variety of roles. Prior to this, he was a lecturer at Örebro University. He has a PhD in statistics from Uppsala University with the thesis "Essays on Model Assisted Survey Planning".

If you believe your research interests may align with CSIRO, AIMS, Petra or Juan please get in touch with the ACEMS Stakeholder Engagement Officer who can connect you via email: industry@acems.org.au. Also keep in mind the Industry Collaboration Support Scheme (ICSS) (https://acems.org.au/acems-support-schemes) which welcomes applications from ACEMS members interested in collaborating with our Partners Organisations.