Eilidh Smith

My research background has been focused on herbivore ecology and distribution. My MSc looked at the impact of artificial waterholes on vegetation in the Greater Kruger, South Africa and how this related to herbivore use of the waterholes.

In Canada I began working on deer, first as a field technician on the Ya Ha Tinda Longterm Elk Monitoring Project tracking calf survival and migration patterns, and then as a research assistant looking at how the behaviour and ecology of mule deer contribute to the spread of chronic wasting disease. Before starting my PhD I worked on a project studying reindeer behaviour in the Cairngorms, Scotland, using GPS collars and accelerometers.

This research neatly ties my academic interests in wildlife conservation and management, and personal interests in mountain activities and the outdoors in an exciting opportunity to contribute to effective landscape management in Scotland and reduce conflict between land users.

Neil Anderson

I am a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh where I am the Programme Director of the MVetSci Conservation Medicine and MSc One Health programmes. I qualified as a veterinarian in 1996 and completed a PhD in wildlife epidemiology from the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine in 2009. I have field experience working with free-ranging wildlife populations in southern Africa and the UK.

My research focusses on wildlife health and the application of interdisciplinary One Health and Conservation Medicine approaches. I have a particular interest in disease transmission across the human-wildlife-livestock interface and I have specific expertise on the ecology and epidemiology of African trypanosomiasis. I also provide veterinary and scientific support for conservation projects including the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project for which I am Chair of the Scientific Advisory Panel.

Philip Stephens

I use predictive population ecology to inform biodiversity conservation and wildlife management. In pursuit of a better science of predictive population ecology, my research is focused on four interacting themes. First, to make predictions, ecologists need a robust understanding of available data. Ecological data are noisy, however, demanding a careful treatment of uncertainty and cautious inference. I am interested in understanding uncertainty and its sources in ecological data, and in methods to make robust inferences from data. Second, baseline data often come from biodiversity monitoring, and I am interested in monitoring techniques and their interpretation. Third, there is no fundamental theory to guide predictions about how populations will respond to change – but there is a fundamental theory to make predictions about how individuals will respond to change: natural selection. By understanding how natural selection operates and influences individual strategies, we can strengthen the predictions we make about populations, whose fates are the sum of the fates of their constituent individuals. Fourth, populations do not exist in a vacuum, so I am also interested in species interactions – especially predator-prey interactions and their energetic underpinnings.