We are delighted to welcome three new Vice-Chairs of the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC): Nina Bednaršek, Rowan Trebilco, and Derek Armitage. The new Vice-Chairs were officially confirmed in October by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research and Future Earth.
Nina Bednaršek focuses on ocean acidification and the impacts of multiple stressors and changes on marine ecosystems. Her engagement with IMBeR began at the IMBIZO5 conference in 2017, and she officially joined the SSC in January 2022. As a Co-Champion of IMBeR Grand Challenge I and Innovation Challenge 5, as well as the SSC representative for Integrated Ocean Carbon Research (IOC-R), she contributes to synthesizing efforts to understand and quantify the state and variability of marine ecosystems.
Rowan Trebilco focuses on sustaining and optimizing ocean ecosystem services and social-ecological systems in the face of change. He has been actively involved with IMBeR for many years and joined the SSC in August 2023. As the team leader of marine ecosystem modelling & assessment at CSIRO, his involvement further strengthens IMBeR Grand Challenge II, which aims to improve scenarios, predictions, and projections of future ocean-human systems at multiple scales.
Derek Armitage’s interdisciplinary research supports adaptive governance of oceans, coasts, and fisheries in the context of social-ecological change, emphasizing co-management and knowledge co-production, community conservation, and resilience approaches. His formal connection with IMBeR began at the IMBeR Open Science Conference in 2019, where he delivered a keynote presentation for Grand Challenge III. He joined the SSC in January 2022 and serves as a Co-Champion for Grand Challenge III, focusing on improving and achieving sustainable ocean governance.
We also want to express our gratitude to the past Interim Co-Chairpersons, Alice Newton, Marion Gehlen and Micaela Trimble, for their contributions.
More information about the SSC is available here.