I'm overwhelmed, ecstatic and immensely grateful to receive a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. This Fellowship provides stability and freedom that will enable me to support and mentor the next generation of scientists, undertake cutting-edge research (that I hope will make a difference), and communicate our outcomes and solutions with the creativity that it deserves.
The article and graphical abstract below provide a snapshot of my Future Fellowship research on seafood provenance and fraud. In essence, I will develop a new technology that will trace the geographic origins of seafood from catch to table and empower authorities, industry and consumers to combat seafood fraud. In doing so, this research will use natural chemical variation in biominerals to build maps of ocean chemistry and create universal markers of seafood provenance. These markers will be intrinsically tamper-proof: enabling the chemical geolocation of seafood across international trade routes.
A range of student projects are now available on this critical topic.
*Left-hand image by Gephart et al. 2016. Vulnerability to shocks in the global seafood trade network. Environ Res Lett 11, 035008.