University of Melbourne (2023–Present)

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Biophysical Ecology Lab at the University of Melbourne, working with ARC Laureate Fellow Michael Kearney. My research combines historical field datasets with biophysical models to understand how energy budgets of both endotherms and ectotherms respond to warming — from short-term heatwaves to long-term, decadal-scale change.

In a recent Science paper I led, we used over 40 years of field observations alongside mechanistic models to quantify a “cost-of-living” squeeze in desert lizards, where warming climates increase energetic costs while limiting foraging opportunities. This work revealed that the impacts of climate change are highly species-specific but, with the right data, predictable. 

In 2025 I was awarded the Mike Bull Award for Early Career Nature Scientists. Funding from this grant will allow me to collect field data to measure aspects of  metabolic depression in desert lizards.

My current projects include:

• Energetics of hibernating bats – In collaboration with Dr. Shannon Currie (University of Melbourne), I am quantifying the energetic costs of hibernation in bats and forecasting how these will shift under future climates.
• Marsupial heatwave physiology – In collaboration with Dr. Zenon Czenze (University of New England) and Katherine Moseby (UNSW), we conducted field measurements of metabolic rates in endangered Shark Bay Bandicoots and Numbats to assess their vulnerability to extreme heat events.
• Trait database for mechanistic models – I am developing a functional trait database using the trait.build framework. This database will parameterise mechanistic niche models to calculate heat budgets for leaves, ectotherms, and endotherms.

 
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Australian National University (2023–2024)

​As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with ARC Future Fellow Daniel Noble at the Australian National University, my work focused on how developmental environments shape phenotypes across life stages. Using experimental manipulations and meta-analytic approaches, we examined the effects of incubation conditions on traits such as thermal physiology, behaviour, and energetics.

I co-led a Biology Letters paper with an undergraduate student showing that developmental environments have little effect on reptiles’ thermal physiological traits, both in controlled experiments and across species in a global meta-analysis. These findings suggest that behavioural thermoregulation or evolutionary adaptation may be more critical than developmental plasticity in buffering species against climate change.

I was featured in the Journal of Experimental Biology's ECR spotlight. During this postdoc position I was involved publishing across scales — from cellular to whole-organism — in journals including Journal of Experimental Biology, General and Comparative Endocrinology, Behavioral Ecology, and Animal Behaviour, advancing our understanding of how early-life environments influence performance and survival in ectotherms.