At high school I was a bit of a science and mathematics nerd. I always found maths extremely easy, and far more fun and sensible than fuzzy subjects which used vague and inadequate language. I was always an avid reader, and I enjoyed literature, poetry and drama, but it was always far more difficult for me than mathematics.

For my undergraduate degree, at Monash University, I originally enrolled in Science/Engineering, but after a week swapped the excruciating engineering subject for the exciting Philosophy subject. I blame Hofstadter and Dennett. My degree consisted of a mixture of maths, physics and philosophy. I completed an BSc Honours degree in Pure Mathematics, graduating with excellent first class honours, with a thesis on “Algebraic Knot Theory”. However I felt disillusioned with mathematics: my work was good and I could certainly have a career as a mathematician, but I knew it would not satisfy me. The isolation of doing extremely difficult and esoteric work was not the future I wanted for myself.

After Honours I needed to escape the university, and travelled for two years. I climbed mountains and learnt to fire juggle. When I returned to Melbourne I enrolled in an honours year in Philosophy back at Monash, which I completed with first class honours. My thesis was on connectionist approaches to artificial intelligence: “Cartoon Brains with Cartoon Minds”. That year I also completed coursework on many diverse areas of philosophy, from logic and philosophy of language to Continental philosophy and feminist philosophy.

In 2001 I completed my PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Monash University. My thesis, titled “Thinking Locally“, looks at issues arising from the so-called “special sciences”, in particular ecology and environmental science. In the PhD program I found a way of merging my talents for mathematics with a practical and ethical motivation for my work. It involved me learning a lot about ecology, and biology more generally, which I had never studied formally before. I love learning, and I love exploring an area which is both important and exciting.

After completing my PhD spent three years as a Research Fellow in the Knowledge Management Research Program, in the school (formerly) known as SIMS at Monash University.

In 2005 I completed a Masters of Environment at the University of Melbourne, specialising in Conservation, Restoration and Landscape Management. The degree involved coursework in Environmental Risk Assessment, Wildlife Management, Environmental Sampling and Analysis, Environmental Impact Assessment and Restoration Ecology. I also completed a research project in Quoll population modelling which involved building a computer population model for the Spot-tailed quoll and making some broad assessments of their population viability.