Chief Investigator

Dr Aaron Greenville (University of Sydney)

Bachelor of Science (Honours First Class, Biology)
PhD (Ecology)

Aaron has a PhD in Ecology and Honours (First Class) in Biology from the University of Sydney, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He currently leads the Ecosystem Dynamics Lab within the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, which aims to understand how ecosystems respond to disturbance events across space and time. His research interests include three themes: ecosystem responses to climate change, species interactions (competition and predation) and technology for ecology and environmental sciences.

Aaron’s broad interests in statistics and modelling include Bayesian multivariate auto-regressive state-space models for time-series data, uncertainty in spatio-temporal models, structural equation modelling, machine learning and near-term ecological forecasting. Aaron uses a wide range of data sources that combine traditional ecological survey data with remote sensing data to track vegetation response to fire, droughts and flooding rains; wildlife camera images and acoustic data to survey and quantify how biodiversity responds to disturbance, within both natural and agricultural environments and runs and uses citizen scientist programs to collect data to understand the role of predation and distribution of invasive species.

Aaron provides expert advice to several projects for the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, and NGOs such as Bush Heritage Australia and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute. His also contributes his expertise to the IUCN SSC Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group. Prior to academia, Aaron worked in industry for NSW State Forests and as an environmental consultant.