Marine Vertebrate Ecology Lab

November: Ilona Sinn, Elise Beaumont, Nina Rothe and Hannah Davies presented at the UOW HDR Conference, with Hannah taking home the award for best 1st-year presentation prize!

October: Katharina Peters, Hannah Davis, Juliette Gard, Ilona Sinn, Elise Beaumont,, Evi Hanninger, Nicholai Xuereb and BEAM Lab leader Frédérik Saltré, are attending the 26th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, taking place in San Juan, Puerto Rico!

September: Katharina Peters, Nina Rothe, Elise Beaumont, Krista van der Linde and BEAM Lab leader Frédérik Saltré are doing marine mammal fieldwork in Kaikōura, Aotearoa New Zealand.

August: Hannah Davies, & Frederik Saltre participated in The Beaker Street's Roving Scientist Bar at the Hope & Anchor in Hobart as part of the Beaker Street Festival 2026.

August: Ilona Sinn attended the Australian Antarctic Research Conference in Hobart and was awarded the Early Career Researcher Poster Prize.

August: Katharina J. Peters teamed up with BEAM Lab leader Frédérik Saltré for a day of science with Year 5–6 students at Cowandilla Primary School in Adelaide. The focus for the day was adaptation and how species respond to climate change.

August: We welcome Eryn Sampson as a new UTS Masters student in the group (in collaboration with BEAM and CERG)  is developing demographic models to predict and anticipate the population-level consequences of stranding events.

August: Welcome to our new 3rd-year intern at UTS, Angelina Kolevris (co-supervised with BEAM and CERG). She will use morphometric measurements from stranded individuals and comparative allometric modelling to provide fundamental biological information needed to better understand beaked whale life history, evolution, and vulnerability to environmental change.

August: MAVE & BEAM labs (Ilona Sinn, Juliette Gard, Hannah Davies, Elise Beaumont, Frederik Saltre & Katharina Peters) participated to Singing with Whales: an educational whale watching immersion experience organised by Australian Philanthropic Services. 

August: Ilona Sinn, Juliette Gard, Elise Beaumont and Katharina Peters went on air with ABC Illawarra and chatted about studying whales and dolphins during National Science Week. 

August: Ilona Sinn, Juliette Gard, Hannah Davies, Elise Beaumont and Katharina Peters presented their research at the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum during National Science Week. 

August: Eva-Maria Hanninger passes her PhD examination with no emendations. Impressive work, congratulations Dr Hanninger!

July: Juliette Gard successfully passed her Research Proposal Review and upgrades to a PhD, and secures a University Postgraduate Award from UOW for her studies! Congratulations!

June: Congratulations Juliette Gard and Hannah Davies for having been awarded the ATA Scientific Encouragement Award!

March: We welcome Elise Beaumont as a new PhD student who will develop a dynamic ocean management tool to reduce humpback whale entanglement in fishing gear in New South Wales. 

March: Welcome to our new PhD student, Ilona Sinn. Her research will investigate the impacts of anthropogenic factors on humpback whale migration and behaviour in Antarctic waters.

March: Hannah Davies has officially started her PhD during which she will be studying cetacean strandings across Australia and New Zealand. Welcome, Hannah! 

January: We welcome Nina Rothe as a new PhD student who will be working on on the health of sperm and humpback whales in Kaikōura, using health indicators such as body condition, respiratory microbiome diversity and scarring rates.

January: Welcome to our new Master student Juliette Gard. Her research focus on establishing a baseline of population metrics for the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin population in Jervis Bay.