Paul Flemons

Paul is Manager of Citizen Science and Expeditions

Paul:

• heads up the Australian Museums Centre for Citizen Science, overseeing an impressive suite of citizen science projects including FrogID, DigiVol and Australasian Fishes.
• works with other Museum staff to develop, implement and lead an ambitious program of expeditions. Expeditions he has lead include Lord Howe Island and Balls Pyramid in 2017 and Malaita in the Solomon Islands in 2018/19.

Paul joined the Museum in 1998, establishing the Museum’s spatial analysis capacity and initially managing the GIS facilities and modelling the spatial distribution of biodiversity. As part of an Australian Museum team he provided input to the Forestry assessment process that saw invertebrates being used for the first time in the designing and specification of reserve systems in the eastern forests of NSW.

He has been instrumental in building the Museum’s reputation as a world leader in biodiversity informatics. Paul has a particular interest in developing innovative solutions to biodiversity informatics challenges, in particular web based applications for accessing and analysing biodiversity collection data. In recent years he has developed the DigiVol project. which is recognised globally as an innovative best practice volunteer based program for digitising natural history collections. DigiVol forms the basis of the Museums current drive to digitise its collections in an environment of scarce funding.

Before coming to the Australian Museum he worked for the NSW Department of Agriculture, monitoring cropping and clearing in western NSW using satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, researching methods for identifying native vegetation alteration using remote sensing, and applying GIS to conservation planning and natural resource management.

Qualifications

Paul has a Bachelor of Science in Botany and a Master of Science in Remote Sensing.

Awards

Paul was the recipient of the highly regarded Ebbe Nielsen Prize from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility in 2007 for his innovative work in biodiversity informatics.