Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University
Iain grew up in Canada where he completed his BSc (Mount Allison University), MSc (Dalhousie University), and a PhD focused on “Habitat use, movement, and vulnerability of sedentary fishes in a dynamic world” (The University of British Columbia). He then spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher in the United States, associated with the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (University of Hawaii), University of California Santa Barbara, and Stanford University. Iain then joined the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University as a Quantitative Social-Ecological Research Associate. Iain is affiliated with James Cook University as an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow and is also the Lead Analyst for MERMAID (datamermaid.org) at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Iain is broadly interested in why fish and other marine organisms end up where they do and what that can mean for their future, and the future of people that depend on those organisms, given changes in global climate and increasing human impacts to many of the world’s coastal ecosystems. Trained as a quantitative ecologist and interested in intersections between ecology and social sciences, Iain uses a variety of analytical approaches to (1) understand what drives distribution and movement of organisms across time and space, (2) predict how changes in those drivers could impact biodiversity and food security, and (3) improve management and conservation strategies to minimize negative effects on ecosystems and the people that depend on them. As the Lead Analyst at MERMAID, Iain helps turn coral reef data into useful stories and meaningful information that can guide evidence-based decision making.