Lauren is a postdoctoral researcher and the data practice lead for the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. She is broadly interested in developing analysis approaches for geospatial data to improve interoperability and quality of evidence; such as considering how data from different sources or at different resolutions or extents can be integrated, and how best to quantify and communicate uncertainty.
Lauren previously worked for Natural England where she provided statistics and data science expertise to evidence projects under Defra’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment programme, including working with data providers and evidence users to improve accuracy and interpretation of derived data products. Lauren’s background is in applied mathematics, holding an MMath Mathematics from the University of Oxford, after which she completed a PhD in zoonotic disease ecology at Imperial College London in collaboration with the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, UCL.
Bawa Sulemana is an ecologist and doctoral candidate at Oriel College, University of Oxford. He works in the ecology working group of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery in the Environmental Change Institute.
As an ecologist and conservation biologist, Sulemana has substantial research experience in ornithology, herpetology, and freshwater ecology, and his current research focuses on advancing eco-acoustics, camera trapping and other remote sensing technologies to monitor biodiversity in tropical ecosystems. Sulemana is also a conservation practitioner integrating Indigenous knowledge systems with conventional Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for biodiversity management through Community-led conservation initiatives where Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK), traditional values and practices are employed to manage natural resources. Before commencing his studies at Oxford, he led rewilding initiatives and developed community-based biodiversity monitoring approaches for collaborative resource management in Ghana.
Sulemana’s DPhil research seeks to upscale the use of eco-acoustics for monitoring nature recovery by leveraging Artificial Intelligence to analyze acoustic data. His research will develop and apply unsupervised machine learning models that require minimal labelled data to analyze soundscapes and derive metrics of ecological integrity. Also, by analysing species’ functional structures and energy flows across taxa, he aims to evaluate the effectiveness of various nature recovery interventions in fostering truly resilient ecosystems. In addition, his work investigates approaches to reliably estimate species abundance and density from acoustic data while integrating high-resolution LiDAR and eco-acoustics to map habitat structure and model occupancy and distribution of keystone species.
By investigating the multifaceted dynamics of ecosystem resilience and restoration, Sulemana’s research will contribute valuable insights to both the scientific and conservation communities. His findings in the tropical ecosystem will hold significant value for the broader fields of ecological restoration and AI-driven biodiversity monitoring globally.
The United Nations Secretary-General designated Dr. David Cooper as Acting Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as of 15 February 2023 until 1 July 2024.
Prior to his appointment, David had been the Deputy Executive Secretary at the CBD Secretariat since October 2015, where he assisted the Executive Secretary by leading the strategic and planning activities of the Secretariat, as well as the intergovernmental processes and activities under the Convention and its two protocols — the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing.ECI
David has more than 30 years of experience in environmental and agricultural science and policy, and international negotiations, including more than 20 years with the CBD. He has built strong and productive working relationships with Parties in all regions and with partners in civil society, international organisations, and the scientific community. As Secretary of the fifteenth meeting of the CBD Conference of the Parties (COP 15), held in Kunming, China (in October 2021) and in Montreal, Canada (in December 2022), David was instrumental in facilitating the complex pathway that led to the successful finalisation and adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and other key decisions, including those on digital sequence information on genetic resources, and on resource mobilisation.
David was previously Director of the division for science, assessment and monitoring at the Secretariat. Prior to that, he coordinated implementation of the Convention’s strategic plans, including through the national biodiversity strategies and action plans, and led various work programmes, including on agricultural biodiversity, drylands, plant conservation, climate change and engagement with the private sector.
Nicola is the current Trapnell Fellow in African Environments. My current research interests are centred around understanding the dynamics of African grassy ecosystems and how they are changing in the Anthropocene. I’m especially interested in understanding how altered fire and herbivory regimes against a backdrop of changing CO2 concentrations are driving changes. Along this vein I have become particularly interested in the phenomenon of woody encroachment where open ecosystems across the tropics are being invaded by native woody species. It has also driven me to improve our ability to predict future species ranges under global change by improving our mechanistic understanding of range edges in disturbance limited systems. I have ongoing projects in Southern and East Africa.
Thomas is a DPhil candidate researching urban biodiveristy and connectivity within urban landscapes with a specific focus on London, UK. He is a part of the Environmental Change Institute, the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and works within the Biodiveristy, Ecosystems, and Conservation Cluster in the School of Geography. He is a member of Oriel College.
Prior to his Doctoral studies, Thomas completed his MSc also at Oxford in SoGE where he studied Biodiversity, Conservation and Management. His dissertation looked at the role and proficiency of Biodiveristy Net Gain (BNG) in meeting conservation requirements in the City of Westminster. Before this he achieved a BA from McGill University in Montréal, where he studied Philosophy and Environmental Biology, graduating with Distinction.
Thomas also worked at the Gluon Group – a green investment holding company – in London upon finishing his undergraduate studies. He is committed to finding solutions to tackle the biodiveristy and climate crises in our cities and is looking to work with private, public and third sector organisations to achieve this throughout his DPhil.
I am a Senior Research Associate at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. I use a mix of quantitative methods to explore socio-ecological systems, working at the intersection of nature, risk, collective action, and sustainable development. At the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, my current research investigates how nature can be integrated into economic modeling frameworks to inform strategies for nature conservation and restoration. This research aims to help shaping the global discourse on nature finance, examining whether pricing ecosystem services can enhance the management of natural capital and how payment for ecosystem services could support developing countries in breaking the cycle of unsustainable debt.
Haoran is interested in tree pests and disease outbreaks worldwide. During the Master’s, he worked to understand the ecological consequences of ash dieback disease. He compiled a climate-demographics database to study how the environment interacts with the pathogen to change tree mortality rates.
He also developed a model to forecast disease impact on forest health at Wytham Woods. In his DPhil project, Haoran will compile a global database of forest pests and diseases, and assessing how they affect forest biodiversity and nutrient cycles through integrative modelling. He is passionate about providing data and modelling products to nature recovery in diseased woodlands.
Haoran has a BA in Ecology from Zhejiang University, and an MPhil in Biodiversity, Conservation, and Management from, the University of Oxford. His DPhil project will be funded by the Scottish Forestry Trust.
Tanaya (she/her) is an ecologist and artist from India. Her research interests in biodiversity resilience and nature recovery expand across scales (from fine scale to macro scale) and biomes. She is reading a DPhil in Geography and Environment at University of Oxford on a project that characterises microclimates in mixed tree and grass ecosystems in India and Africa to better understand how we can manage these vulnerable landscapes and the species that inhabit them.
Tanaya is most herself when she is outdoors looking for birds and plants, hovering over a coral reef with a magnifying glass, or walking long distances across forests and grasslands. She is actively researching and workshopping how art and science can come together to roll out research more meaningfully and urgently in the world.
Wendee is an urban geographer, with research interests mainly including environmental sustainability, wellbeing and urban planning. Wendee is now a postdoctoral researcher at Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery working on project investigating the health/wellbeing benefits of urban green and blue spaces. For the past two years, Wendee worked on projects funded by medical research council on health benefits of urban green and blue spaces in Merseyside and Cheshire. Wendee is the current secretary of Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group at RGS. Wendee finished her My PhD in Geography from University of Melbourne, the thesis examined the sustainability transitions of urban planning in a future city, its implications on environmental policies on urban water management, and the usage of hydraulic missions to realise water sustainability. Her research findings had been published on Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, Land Use policy, Journal of Environmental Management etc.
Tom Harwood is the Associate Director of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. He is currently working with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery to set local case studies within their regional biodiversity context, and build a globally consistent environmental infrastructure to support the next generation of integrative decision tools addressing biodiversity, land use and climate change.
He is a spatial ecological modeller with advanced software engineering skills who works across a wide range of environmental domains at fine resolution from local to global scales. Over the course of his career, Tom has worked on epidemiology, geneflow, weather and microclimate generation, terrain adjustment and downscaling of climate, land use and crop modelling. Tom has a particular focus on the delivery of spatial metrics for practical policy to address biodiversity loss and climate change, and joined Oxford from CSIRO in Australia in 2023, where he has been supporting national planning and monitoring for 14 years. Another key focus of Tom’s work is the estimation of the local condition of habitat using different remote sensing based approaches, as a prerequisite for biodiversity analysis.
