Martin Westgate

When I first visited the forests of New South Wales on a childhood family holiday, I was amazed at the diversity of plant and animal life in Australia's majestic national parks. These experiences left a permanent impression on me of the beauty and preciousness of nature, and the need for us to preserve these wonders for future generations.

After completing my undergraduate studies in environmental management, I spent 12 years at the Australian National University – first as a doctoral student, later as a lecturer and researcher – working to understand the processes that influence where species live, and how those impacts might be lessened to reduce the threat of extinction. Along the way, I developed a parallel skillset in research software engineering; the process of building computational tools tailored to the needs of researchers working at the cutting edge of scientific enquiry. In combination, this body of work led to over 50 scientific papers and two major awards.

In 2020, I moved to CSIRO to found the Science & Decision Support Team at Australia's national biodiversity database, the Atlas of Living Australia. Today, my team and I develop software and workflows used around the world to locate, interrogate and understand patterns in nature.

With the support of this fellowship, I will collaborate with researchers from international centres of excellence in biodiversity science and informatics, to understand how we can better detect and resolve anomalies in datasets containing millions or even billions of observations of plants and animals. These innovations would not only power a new generation of scientific discoveries; but also expand the potential of large biodiversity databases to support the conservation of Australian species and ecosystems into the future.