Postdoctoral Fellow Full-time

Postdoctoral Fellow

Help protect Australia's environments, industries and communities from the next generation of invasive plant species. This postdoctoral position offers the chance to lead development of a nationally significant dataset on Australia's introduced flora, working at the forefront of horizon-scanning research to identify high-risk weeds before they arrive and establish — directly informing national and state biosecurity policy, including the Australian Weed Strategy and NSW New Weed Incursion Plan.

Contribute to a high-impact national biosecurity initiative with direct policy influence. Build advanced skills in invasion ecology, large-scale data synthesis, and weed risk prioritisation, while establishing collaborative relationships with herbaria, government agencies, and researchers nationally.

This position is a fixed term for a period of 12 months to contribute to a project identifying and prioritising Australia's next potential invasive plant species. Working closely with Professor Jane Catford and a network of collaborators, the postdoctoral researcher will help develop an up-to-date national list of introduced flora, identify high-risk weed species with probable entry pathways into Australia, and curate the underpinning datasets to support future weed risk assessment and prioritisation.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Compiling and maintaining an up-to-date national list of Australia's introduced flora, in collaboration with state and territory herbaria.
• Identifying high-risk weed species not yet present in Australia and assessing their likely entry pathways.
• Curating project datasets and developing approaches for prioritising species for future weed risk assessment.
• Liaising with network of leading weed botanists, plant ecologists, herbaria and biosecurity experts across every Australian state and territory, in addition to key project partners.

The role is based in Jane Catford's Ecological Change research group at the Australian National University. The successful candidate will also work closely with key partners at the National Herbarium of NSW, Botanic Gardens of Sydney (Dr Patricia Lu-Irving) and Western Sydney University's Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (Prof. Rachael Gallagher), and the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, the project's funder (Dr Stephen Johnson).

Applications are particularly invited from researchers who undertake high impact collaborative and cross-disciplinary research, and whose interests and expertise contribute to the activity cluster, School, and College.