Keynote Speakers
Workshop 1 Keynote Speaker: Jacob Carstensen
Jacob Carstensen is a professor at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research interests include describing and understanding long-term changes in marine ecosystems in response to nutrient enrichment, climate change and physical disturbances resulting from human activities. Jacob is very engaged in environmental policies in the Baltic Sea area, on national and regional levels, through developing ecological indicators and integrated assessment systems. He also provides recommendations to agencies and regional sea conventions on nutrient management. Much of his research has centred on eutrophication and its adverse effects, such as algal blooms, loss of benthic vegetation and hypoxia. Jacob has published more >170 papers in peer-reviewed journals, which have been cited ~18000 times, yielding an H-index of 62. According to Web-of-Science, he ranked among the top 1% cited scientists within the discipline of cross-disciplinary science in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Workshop 2 Keynote Speaker: Beth Fulton
Beth Fulton is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. She is also the Deputy Director of the Centre of Marine Socioecology and the Research Program Leader for Ecosystems and Environment in the Australia Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre. Beth has vast experience in ecosystem modelling and sustainability, working with a broad range of collaborators to find practical means of achieving ecosystem-based management and sustainability. She has developed various system modelling tools, the best known of which is the Atlantis modelling framework that has been applied in more than 40 marine ecosystems around the world. The models developed by Beth’s team are some of the first to give equal attention to biophysical and human components of marine and coastal ecosystems and have been used to consider effective means of conserving and monitoring marine and coastal ecosystems.
Workshop 3 Keynote Speaker: Denis Aheto
Denis Aheto is a Professor of Coastal Ecology and Director of the Centre for Coastal Management – The Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience (ACECoR) at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He is a distinguished German trained academic (DAAD Scholar) and expert in coastal management, with over 10 years of project management experience. He is the authorized representative of institutional donor funded projects in coastal and fisheries management at the University of Cape Coast funded by the World Bank, USAID and DANIDA among others worth over US$ 15 million. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Centre for Coastal Management (CCM) at the University of Cape Coast in 2013. His academic and professional awards include the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Prize in 2007 for outstanding academic achievement at the University of Bremen. In 2015, he was awarded the University of Cape Coast’s Award of Honour as Distinguished Lecturer. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and has also authored several consultancy and commissioned project reports. He is a member of the United Nations Pool of Experts for Global Assessments on the state of the marine environment. He is also a member of the World Bank interim Technical Advisory Committee (iTAC) of the West Africa Coastal Area (WACA) Program and a member of the Advisory Board for the US Government’s Feed the Future program of USAID. At the national level, he is a member of the UNESCO Man and Biosphere (MAB) National Committee under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana.
Closing Session Keynote Speaker: Mark Dickey-Collas
Mark Dickey-Collas is an experienced marine scientist, operating independently as DickeyCollas Marine; with expertise in the provision of scientific advice to governments for marine conservation, fisheries, biodiversity and ecosystem-based management. DickeyCollas Marine specialises in knowledge for policy development, and operational decision-making, in facilitation, and strategic development of marine science programmes around the world. Mark has over 30 years’ experience, with a decade in Northern Ireland, in the Netherlands, and in ICES HQ, in Denmark. Initially he specialised in pelagic fish and fisheries, and moved into the realm of EBM, and then became Chair of the ICES Advisory Committee. His scientific experience spreads across population dynamics, ecosystem modelling, conservation, stakeholder engagement and the policy/science interface. Mark oversaw the production and delivery of >250 pieces of annual advice to governments. He is an adjunct professor at DTU-Aqua and now a member of the IUCN Fisheries expert group, council member of the Marine Biological Association of the UK and a member of the Defra (UK) biodiversity expert committee. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3154-8039