Curriculum Vitae

Email: jr.ferrer.paris@gmail.com

APPOINTMENTS AND EXPERIENCE

Senior Research Fellow / Senior Lecturer

University of New South Wales, Sydney Oct 2022 – Present

  • Tracking ecosystems and adapting management to change in New South Wales, Australia.
  • Impacts of Red List of Ecosystems in Africa.
  • Red List of Ecosystem assessment of tropical glaciers.
  • Editor of the Red List of Ecosystems guidelines (v2.0)
  • Member of the UNSW Data Science Hub

Senior Research Fellow

University of New South Wales, Sydney Jul 2019 – Oct 2022

  • Development of the IUCN Global Ecosystem typology, leading the preparation and management of digital resources (code, datasets, database and maps).
  • Development of the Fire Ecology Traits for Plants database for fire research and management.
  • Red List of Ecosystems assessments in Myanmar, Chile and Venezuela
  • Member of the UNSW Data Science Hub

Adjunct researcher

Provita (NGO), Venezuela 2016 – Oct 2018

  • Lead the first continental Red List of Ecosystems assessment of the forest of the Americas.
  • Development of the Red List of Ecosystems assessments database

Research Fellow

Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Venezuela 2014 – Oct 2018

  • Head of the Spatial Ecology Lab at the Centre for Botanical and Agroforestry Studies.
  • Management of the Herbarium and the Invertebrate collection
  • Assessment of conservation status of more than 30 invertebrate species for the Venezuelan Red Book of Threatened Animals.

Post doctoral Fellow

University of Cape Town and South African National Biodiversity Institue, South Africa Oct 2011 – Mar 2013

Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientifcas, Venezuela Jan 2011 – Mar 2014

  • Linking biodiversity databases for research on macroecological patterns in biotic interactions between butterflies and their hostplants.

Project manager

Biodiversity Research Unit, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientifcas, Venezuela Jan 2007 – Mar 2010

  • Biodiversity informatics, collection management and database management.
  • Project leader of the Neotropical Biodiversity Mapping Initiative (NeoMapas).

QUALIFICATIONS

PhD in Ecology
Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Venezuela Sep 2001 — Feb 2009

Diplom-Biologe
Universität Bayreuth, Germany 1995 — 2001

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Commission on Ecosystem Management:

  • Member of the Red List of Ecosystem (RLE) Thematic group
  • Member of the RLE Database Committee
  • Member of the Global Ecosystem Typology committee
  • Contributing to the Green Status of Ecosystem working group

Member of the Society for Conservation Biology (Washington D.C., USA), Ecological Society of Australia and Sociedad Venezolana de Ecología.

PRIZES AND AWARDS

  • Postdoctoral Fellowship Threatened Species Programme, South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), Cape Town, South Africa.
  • 2004 Order “José Félix Ribas”, 2nd Class in the category Science and Innovation, Ministerio de Salud y Desarrollo Social, Caracas, Venezuela.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I apply function-based approaches to understand and classify terrestrial, freshwater, marine and subterranean ecosystems.

I collaborate with international research and practitioner networks leading the development of ecosystem specific indicators and analytical methods.

These indicators support risk assessments of ecosystems, condition measurement and quantitative synthesis of ecosystem data to inform national and global reporting on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

RESEARCH OUTPUTS

August 2024:

  • 40 peer reviewed publications in scientific journals, two books, one book chapter and one article in conference proceedings,
    • Google Scholar (since 2019): H-index = 16 (13), i10-index = 20 (16); citations = 1135 (918)
    • Scopus: H-index = 13, 36 documents, 640 citations by 573 documents,
    • Web of Science: H-index = 12, 34 publications, 463 citations, 31 verified peer reviews
  • Contributions to open and reproducible science including pre-prints, reports, datasets, code and software in open access research repositories,
    • DataCite Commons: 379 works with 365 citations, 94% with open access licenses
    • Figshare: 63 contributions, 53991 item views, 21295 item downloads,
    • Zenodo: 108 contributions, OSF: 9 public projects, GitHub: 99 repositories

RESEARCH GRANTS

IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature 2024

  • Chief investigator, 30,000 CHF (approved)

NSW Applied Bushfire Science Program 2022

  • Chief investigator, 49,000 AUD

IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) / International Contract 2021

  • Chief investigator, 23,435 USD

University of Eastern Finland / International Contract 2020

  • Partner investigator, 18,000 USD

Encyclopedia of Life. Washington, USA. 2013

  • EOL Rubenstein Research Fellows award, 30,000 USD

HIGHER DEGREE RESEARCH STUDENT SUPERVISION

Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Venezuela:

  • Izabela Stachowicz, PhD, Primary Supervision 2014-2018
  • Arianna Thomas Cabianca, MSc (Masters by research), Joint Supervision 2011-2014

EDUCATION, CAPACITY BUILDING AND OUTREACH

Skills seminard for HDR students 2023-2024

  • Contributed sessions on reproducibility of research, sharing of research data, and best practices for coding in R.

uDASH Year 10 Work Experience 2022-2024

  • Outreach activity of the UNSW Data Science Hub
  • Work experience program for Year 10 students
  • Led development and delivery in 2023
  • Design of the week activities combining lectures, invited speakers, guided hands-on coding work
  • Introduction to R and posit cloud

Carpentries Instructor 2022-2024

  • Certified Carpentries Instructor
  • Volunteer instructor for Data carpentry and Software carpentry workshops

UNSW codeRs 2021-2024

  • R coding community run by students and staff
  • Founder and Steering Committee member
  • Drop-in help sessions for R coding and statistics
  • Virtual, in-person and hybrid workshops

Restech drop-in help sessions 2021-2023

  • Mentoring of staff and students
  • Coding help for R and Python users
  • Using High Performance Computers for Research
  • Accessing Research Technology Services on campus

Workshop Red List of Ecosystems in Africa, Kigali, Rwanda 2022

  • Co-led organisation
  • Topic: Red List of Ecosystems in Africa, supporting policy, practice and planning
  • Event at the IUCN Africa Protected Area Congress, APAC

Biostatistics course, Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay 2019

  • Invited lecturer
  • Postgraduate program “Maestría en Ciencias Biológicas; Mención Biodiversidad y Sistemática”
  • Led development and delivery

Red List training workshop, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 2018

  • Red List of Threatened Species and Red List of Ecosystem training workshop
  • Equal contribution to convening and delivering
  • First joint workshop on Red List methods for species and ecosystems

Red List of Ecosystem training workshop, Georgetown, Guyana 2018

  • Invited instructor

Symposium An Insight into the Orinoco Mining Arc, Trinidad & Tobago 2018

  • An Insight into the Orinoco Mining Arc: its implications for Venezuela and the eastern Caribbean
  • Co-led organisation
  • Inaugural Latin American and Caribbean Congress on Conservation Biology.

Red List of Ecosystem training workshop Asunción, Paraguay 2017

Workshop Innovative Tools and Approaches for Ecosystem Risk Assessment in Latin America and Symposium Red Lists of Ecosystems in Latin America from National Efforts to a Regional Strategy, Cartagena, Colombia 2017

  • Co-led organisation
  • Part of the scientific program of the 28th International Congress for Conservation Biology

Capacity-building program for species conservation, Venezuela 2014-2017

  • Design and testing of a replicable, scalable capacity-building model
  • Supporting role in design, equal contribution in delivery and supervison
  • Inter-institutional courses leveraged on the research facilities and infrastructure provided by the host institution
  • provided training to more than 200 students, professionals, technicians and governmental agency officials involved in the management of biological diversity.

NeoMaps: biodiversity monitoring, Venezuela 2006, 2009, 2010

  • Immersive international field courses with students, volunteers and lecturers from Latin America, Spain, USA, France and UK
  • Different roles: coordinator of field work and lab activities (2006), design and convening (2009, 2010)
  • Program included training and induction, theory, immersive fieldwork and laboratory/collection management work

INVITED PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS

  • Invited seminar: Applications of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems in research and conservation Open Seminar of the Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Science, Białowieża Poland (February 2024)
  • Invited virtual workshop: Geospatial data in R for the Macquarie University R Users Group. (December 2023)
  • Invited seminar: TIPOLOGÍA GLOBAL DE ECOSISTEMAS DE LA UICN: Un marco de clasificación integral para los ecosistemas de la tierra, integrando sus características funcionales y de composición. Virtual seminar of the IUCN Commission for Ecosystem Management (Latin America and Caribbean section). 2023
  • Invited Fireside chat about UNSW CodeRs at the ARDC Digital Research Skills Summit 2023, Sydney. 2023
  • Invited speaker at the virtual session: “The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems: opportunities and challenges to support the post 2020 framework and the Sustainable Development Goals in Latin America”. Science Summit of the 77 United Nations General Assembly. 2022
  • Invited speaker at the virtual session: “Science-based targets for Ecosystems in the post-2020 framework for Biodiversity”. IUCN World Conservation Congress, Marseille, France. 2021
  • Invited speaker at the “VII Jornadas Ambientales” 2018
  • Invited workshop on “Introduction to R programming for life sciences”, Universidad Espíritu Santo, Guayaquil, Ecuador. 2018
  • Visiting instructor for Workshop “Introduction to multivariate analysis for the life sciences”. Universidad del Atlántico Colombia. 2014
  • Invited Presentation at the 4th Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network (TEAM) meeting. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 2011