Plenary Speakers

Dr Ong Jin Eong

Ong Jin Eong did his B.Sc. (Zoology & Botany) at the University of Melbourne and his Ph.D. (on the ultrastructure of neurosensory organs in copepods) at the University of Tasmania. He then joined academia at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang.

Jin Eong's passion for mangrove research started in the mid-1970s, when he formed and led a small but active research group. The foundation group (Ong, Gong, Wong & Dhanarajan) was dubbed “The Gang of Four” but some friends call them “all gone wrong” (rhymes with Ong, Gong, Wong). The group’s main long-term aim was to try to close the carbon (and nutrient) budget of a mangrove ecosystem. To make up for their lack of numbers, the group collaborated extensively with colleagues from within and outside (especially with physical oceanographers and numerical modellers) their major disciplines, often using their quality long-term data sets as attractants.

Jin Eong served on the editorial Board of BIOTROPICA and Mangroves and Salt Marshes and was a member of GESAMP (UN Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection). Although now unemployed, he continues being active with his mangrove hobby, including presently collaborating with the Australian National University (RSBS).

Professor Donald F. Boesch

Don Boesch is a Professor of Marine Science and President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). The Center is one of two research and service institutions in the 13-institution University System of Maryland . It conducts comprehensive research, trains graduate students, contributes to public education, and advises public agencies and others on environmental and natural resource management from its three laboratories distributed across the state: Appalachian Laboratory, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, and Horn Point Laboratory. From June 2002 through October 2003, Dr. Boesch also served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the University System of Maryland.

A native of New Orleans, Don Boesch received his B.S. from Tulane University and Ph.D. from the College of William & Mary. He was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland and subsequently served on the faculty of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. In 1980 he became the first Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), where he was also a Professor of Marine Science at Louisiana State University. He assumed his present position in Maryland in 1990. Dr. Boesch is a biological oceanographer who has conducted research in coastal and continental shelf environments along the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Australia and the East China Sea. He has published two books and more than 70 papers on marine benthos, estuaries, wetlands, continental shelves, oil pollution, nutrient over-enrichment, environmental assessment and monitoring and science policy. Presently his research focuses on the use of science in ecosystem management.

Don Boesch is active in extending knowledge to environmental and resource management at regional, national and international levels. He has served as science advisor to many state and federal agencies and regional, national and international programs. He has chaired a number of committees and scientific assessment teams that have produced reports on a wide variety of coastal environmental issues.

Dr Max Finlayson

Max Finlayson is a wetland ecologist with a strong interest in wetland management and communication to complement his research interests. He has been a long-time proponent of inter-disciplinary approaches to wetland research and management. These interests were developed initially in the tropical north of Australia and extended to parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.

He is currently employed by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His work now covers the interactions between water management in agriculture and wetlands and includes information exchange and capacity building.

He has worked extensively on the inventory, assessment and monitoring of wetlands in wet tropical, wet-dry tropical and sub-tropical climatic regimes and covering pollution, invasive species and climate change. This has variously included local communities and collaboration with other expert groups, and has resulted in the development and implementation of integrated techniques for wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring, including the critical, but often not well executed, components of consultation and communication. Building bridges between technical experts and local communities has been a long-time interest and at times a bigger challenge than expected! 

He is currently the President of Wetland International’s Board of Directors and Chair of the Ramsar Wetland Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel. He has been involved in several global assessments – the Third Assessment Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and now the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture.  

Professor John C. Avise

Research in John Avise’s laboratory involves use of genetic markers (e.g. from allozymes, microsatellites, and mitochondrial DNA) to analyze the natural histories and evolution of wild animals. Topics range from micro- to macro-evolutionary: genetic parentage, mating patterns, geographic population structure, gene flow, hybridization, introgression, phylogeography, speciation, systematics, and phylogenetics. Prof Avise’s research group has conducted research on all major groups of vertebrates plus some invertebrates, and has involved taxa from marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments. The primary goal typically is to unveil ecological, behavioral, or evolutionary features of the organisms themselves; an important secondary concern is to elucidate molecular and evolutionary properties of protein and DNA molecules. The theory and practice of evolutionary genetics are relevant to ecological issues and to conservation biology, so these areas provide an underlying theme in much of his research. Prof Avise has authored more than 260 papers and eight books, including Avise, J.C. (2004) Molecular Markers, Natural History, and Evolution Sinauer, Sunderland, MA, and Avise, J.C. & J.L. Hamrick (eds) (1996) Conservation Genetics: Case Histories from Nature. Chapman & Hall, New York. Prof Avise has also published extensively on the relevance of evolutionary genetics to human affairs such as the science-religion interface, and genetic engineering.

Dr Conall O'Connell

Dr O’Connell is a Deputy Secretary of the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage.

His responsibilities in the Department include overseeing policies and programmes related to natural resource management, biodiversity conservation, the marine environment and protected areas. Conall joined the Department in 1997. From 1991 until he joined the Department, Conall held various positions in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet handling Australian Federal State relations, primary industries and environment policy.

Conall is a Deputy Commissioner on the Murray Darling Basin Commission. He has a PhD and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons 1) from the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.