People

Violeta Berdejo-Espinola

Violeta is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in multilingual evidence synthesis, working on multilingual literature searches with global collaboration as well as the use of text classifiers based on machine learning approaches. She has a multicultural and multidisciplinary background ranging from environmental management, conservation, and urban planning. Through her work, she had become interested in the way humans benefit from and impact natural environments and biodiversity in different landscapes. Violeta was a senior research technician for the project during the past four years and is also finishing her PhD at the School of the Environment/Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, the University of Queensland, Australia.

Also see: https://cbcs.centre.uq.edu.au/profile/1116/violeta-berdejo-espinola

Marina Corella Tor

Marina is a PhD student at The University of Queensland, working under the supervision of Dr Tatsuya Amano and Prof Richard Fuller. After working as a Research Assistant in the Fuller Lab for the last two years, they are very excited to turn all that work into a PhD. Marina hopes to uncover the current state of international environmental agreements and legislation around migratory bird protection worldwide. They are also interested in the effect of language barriers on international migratory bird agreements across the world.

Erica Cseko-Nolasco

Erica is a nature lover and current PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology. Her early experiences with nature in Brazil taught her the importance of caring for the environment, inspiring her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in biology. Fortunately, she had the opportunity to leave and visit cultures on three continents before settling in Australia. She now works on the social and environmental impacts of conservation initiatives on private lands, aiming to understand how to foster ongoing engagement and support people involved in conservation. Previously, she worked as a research fellow and engagement officer at ICEED, facilitating discussions with groups from diverse cultural backgrounds and brainstorming pathways for restoration. This experience reinforced her belief in the power of communication and collaboration to achieve better environmental conservation and equity. Her main goal is to use interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and practice while promoting pro-environmental behaviours that benefit human well-being and biodiversity.

Erica is a member of the ICCB 2025 Language Accessibility subcommittee and devising ways to reduce language barriers for conference participants.

Ayontika De

Ayontika’s passion for sustainable technologies and resilient communities led her to pursue bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biotechnology and now a master’s in environmental management at The University of Queensland. She has worked across public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, addressing scientific issues in education and health, developing a unique skill set from these diverse experiences. Previously, as a Project Associate, she researched occupational health challenges faced by mining communities in Jharkhand, focusing on silicosis and its socioeconomic impact. Ayontika’s journey includes key collaborations with government and not-for-profit institutions to advance adaptive sustainable frameworks, policy development, and ethical research practices.

Rosa Mar Dominguez-Martinez

Rosa is a PhD candidate at The University of Queensland. Although she grew up in the mountains in Spain, she had the privilege to travel to warmer and sunnier parts with her studies and fell in love with the ocean. She graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Conservation Biology and Management at the University of Stirling (Scotland – not so sunny, and Hawai’i – very sunny) and an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystems (including Malaysia – the sunniest). In her PhD she is investigating the implications that international trade has on the environmental and socioeconomic sustainability of seafood globally, and the sustainability and resilience of seafood supply chains in Australia. She is passionate about conservation and the ocean, and finding novel strategies to promote the environmental and socioeconomic sustainability of the seafood we consume.

Rosa is a member of the ICCB 2025 Language Accessibility subcommittee and devising ways to reduce language barriers for conference participants.

Kelsey Hannah

Kelsey is a PhD Student at The University of Queensland, working under the supervision of Dr Tatsuya Amano. She has an interest in understanding gaps and barriers in implementing conservation science in a way that can promote meaningful improvements. Her research will support the translatE project, focusing on understanding how language barriers can negatively impact the application of science in decision making as well as assessing the importance of non-english conservation science.

See her latest paper here.

Naoki Katayama

Naoki is a researcher seeking a better balance between food production and biodiversity conservation, especially in Asian rice ecosystems. Through his research experience in Japan, he is working on assessing the importance of multilingual scientific evidence for biodiversity conservation in agroecosystems. Naoki is currently a principal investigator at the Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, NARO in Japan and a visiting academic at the School of the Environment, The University of Queensland, Australia.

See his profile at: Google Scholar / ORCID / Twitter

Aquetzalli Nayelli Rivera-Villanueva

Nayelli is a PhD student under the supervision of Dr Tatsuya Amano at the University of Queensland. She is very passionate about bats and language inclusion in science. Her research will be about tapping into non-English-language science for addressing global challenges including biodiversity conservation. She is the founder of, and responsible for an environmental outreach NGO in Mexico (BUM). Her group works to disseminate the importance of bats and tackle the myths surrounding them across all of Mexico. Her goal is that all people can access scientific knowledge and that academia recognizes the importance of including non-English-language evidence in research.

Haonan Wei

Haonan was an honours student majoring in environmental science at The University of Queensland. Her childhood experiences, which had been filled with nature documentaries, provided her with vicarious connections to nature and thus drove her to study her current major. She has a strong interest in the role of popular science as an important medium to gain public attention to environmental issues, and has completed her honours project on the importance of Chinese-language nature documentaries for raising public conservation awareness. She is now also helping our multilingual evidence synthesis project.

See her latest paper here.

Henry Arenas-Castro

Henry was a Senior Research Technician assessing the commitment of journals in organismal biology to overcoming language barriers in academic publishing. He finished his PhD on the study of gametic interactions, where he explored the forces that drive the evolution of pollen-pistil interactions in plants and its consequences for speciation. He combines quantitative genetics and population genomics to understand how pollen competes for fertilising an ovule as well as the various mechanisms of cryptic female choice.

See his paper from this project here.

Also see: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=js2_BV4AAAAJ&hl=en

Pablo Negret

Pablo was a Senior Research Technician for the project helping to understand the impact of language differences in conservation outcomes for vertebrate species. He recently finished his PhD in ecology and biodiversity conservation, particularly understanding how different biological and anthropic factors affect biodiversity patterns and conservation outcomes in the South American tropics. He has also worked in different ecology and conservation projects, including assisted nesting of Arrau and yellow-spotted river turtles, camera trapping and vegetation plots in the Yasuní national park in Ecuador and big cat conservation and ecology with Panthera in Colombia.

See his paper from this project here.

Also see: https://cbcs.centre.uq.edu.au/profile/118/pablo-negret