Andrew is a postdoctoral fellow in the Red Sea Research Center and a member of the first cohort of the KAUST Global Fellowship Program for postdocs. He is an interdisciplinary researcher working across the fields of ecology, fisheries science, and socioeconomics.

Andrew’s studies the interactions between fisheries and large marine vertebrates (marine mammals, sharks, rays, turtles, and finfish), with a particular interest in the management and conservation of data-poor species and fisheries. To achieve this, Andrew combines a wide range of mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) approaches, ranging from traditional fisheries landings and market monitoring to satellite-derived “big data”, local ecological knowledge, bioacoustics, and life history assessment.

The goal of Andrew’s fellowship is to improve the impact of conservation science by helping to transform the discipline from a reactive science, responding to species declines, into a proactive one. To achieve this, his vision is to combine evolutionary and ecological science with powerful machine learning techniques in a novel interdisciplinary approach which proactively identifies species least resilient to human exploitation, and those vital to ecosystem health and the human communities dependent upon them. His belief is that this approach can facilitate prioritisation of the most at-risk species and, in doing so, facilitate targeted and effective conservation and management action.

Biodiversity Fisheries Marine ecology Machine learning Statistical modelling Socioeconomics Species life history Marine mammals Elasmobranchs Sharks Fish Sea turtles