Profile

I completed my PhD on Worker reproductive parasitism in Apis at the University of Sydney in 2010. I worked on sexual selection in stalk-eyed flies as a post-doc at University College London from 2009 to 2013, followed by a post-doc at the University of Sydney from 2013 to 2019. I returned to the University of Sydney in 2020 to undertake a honey bee genetic improvement program.

Honey bees are responsible for 1/3 of the food that we eat. There is a need to breed honey bee populations that are efficient pollinators and are robust to stressors such as pests and diseases. With collaborators I will establish an economically sustainable national genetic improvement program using innovative breeding technologies to transform the performance of honey bees in Australia. It will focus simultaneously on traits of importance to beekeepers, and to the horticultural and broadacre industries that are dependent on honey bee pollination. The strength of this project lies in its ability to leverage benefits across multiple industries by creating a more profitable and sustainable beekeeping industry, improving crop pollination efficiencies and enabling industry expansion through enhanced pollination security.