Keynote Speakers

Robert Twilley

Dr. Twilley is Executive Director of Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Science at LSU. Presently, Dr. Twilley serves as President-Elect of Coastal Estuarine Research Federation. He has been a Distinguished Professor at both LSU and UL Lafayette. In the last several years, Dr. Twilley has served in administrative capacities in higher education including Vice President for Research, Associate Vice Chancellor of Research and Economic Development, and Director of the Wetland Biogeochemistry Institute. He is founder of the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio and developed the UL Lafayette Center for Ecology and Environmental Technology. Most of Dr. Twilley's research has focused on coastal wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico, throughout Latin America, and in the Pacific Islands. Dr. Twilley has published extensively on wetland ecology, global climate change, and has been involved in developing ecosystem models coupled with engineering designs to forecast the rehabilitation of coastal and wetland ecosystems.

Catherine Lovelock

Dr. Lovelock is Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Queensland, Australia. Prior to joining The University of Queensland in 2004 she was Research Scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Maryland, USA and Post Doctoral Fellow at the SmithsonianTropical Research Institute in Panama. She obtained her PhD in 1992 from James Cook University, Queensland,Australia. Her research focuses on the effects of, and adaptations to, climate change in coastal plant communities, fundamental metabolic and physiological processes of coastal and marine plant communities and the impacts of nutrient enrichment on tropical and subtropical coastal and marine plant communities. She leads the Climate Change Adaptation for Natural Resource Management project for the east coast of Australia, she is a member of the International Scientific Blue Carbon Working Group, the CSIRO Coastal Carbon Biogeochemistry Cluster, the EU network for Climate Change Research in the Tropical Coastal Zone and a past member of the advisory committee for coasts of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.