Dr Alex Callen
Dr Alex Callen is a conservation scientist in the School of Environmental and Life Sciences. Her research focuses on the recovery of threatened species in response to ecological restoration to mitigate multiple environmental stresses and how fine scale habitat manipulations can improve their survival. This has led to a number of industry partnerships involving habitat design, creation and management and monitoring for vulnerable amphibian communities in complex natural and industrial environments.
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Alex's research in biodiversity conservation also extends to understanding the role of community science and science art communication in improving biodiversity protection and the human experience. In 2020, Alex co-curated Biomes, an annual community outreach art science exhibition showcasing recent biodiversity conservation research. Inspired by the response of the community to the role of art in science communication, Alex co-founded Stream - Community for Knowledge Exchange (https://streamcommunity.com.au/) which increases accessibility of science to the community by collaboratively developing and supporting experiential exhibitions and workshops.
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Alex has experience in general flora and fauna surveys, vegetation community classification and condition surveys, development of vegetation management plans, surveys of threatened amphibians, citizen science programs, bioacoustics analysis, amphibian micro-chipping, habitat preference analysis, qPCR analysis (disease/infection analysis), water quality monitoring and analysis, statistical analysis and modelling, project management, impact assessment and industry liaison. She worked as an environmental scientist and ecologist in a variety of government and industry positions for sixteen years before returning to Newcastle University to pursue her research and teaching career in 2013.


Current Projects
Coming soon...