Project number: 2024-016
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $5,000.00
Principal Investigator: Maarten De Brauwer
Organisation: Southern Cross University (SCU) National Marine Science Centre
Project start/end date: 12 Sep 2024 - 6 Mar 2025
Contact:
FRDC

Need

This conference is organised by the Southern eDNA Society (SeDNAs - sednasociety.com), Australia and New Zealand's scientific society for the environmental DNA discipline. SeDNAS aims to promote best practices and help the adoption of methods across sectors, by closely working together with researchers, industry, and government. Conferences are organised biannually, alternating between Australia and New Zealand. The first conference (Hobart 2023) was uniformly well received by the attendees, particularly the focus on end-user applications and collaboration. Unlike many other scientific conferences, SeDNAs makes a point of inviting key stakeholders from industry and government to both attend the conference and present their own work or research needs. We found this stimulated discussions to be more likely to develop real-world research collaborations of higher relevance to end-users.

Including and supporting ECRs is an integral part of the mission of SeDNAs. We offer a range of sponsorship opportunities, but as part of our drive to ensure eDNA research benefits industry stakeholders, we are reaching out to key organisations interested in supporting ECRs to travel to the conference. FRDC bursaries would showcase the relevance of FRDC to upcoming molecular fisheries researchers and the broader eDNA community, while also offering FRDC a cost-efficient opportunity to remain abreast of the most cutting edge developments in the field.

Objectives

1. Develop eDNA early career researcher capability and capacity
2. 2 ECRs attend 2024 Australian/NZ eDNA conference
3. Enable eDNA contacts, networks and stakeholder engagement

Related research

Industry
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