Norma Serra, Victoria, Canada

Norma Serra, MSc, is PacMARA’s Program Manager and Lead Marxan trainer, with more than 20 Marxan and Marxan with Zones courses delivered around the world, both in English and Spanish

Virgilio Hersomo, Barcelona, Spain

Virgilio Hermoso’s, PhD, is a Ramon y Cajal Research Fellow at the CTFC (Centre Tecnologic Forestal de Catalunya), Spain, where he is working on implementing systematic methods for informing decision making in environmental problems such as the prioritisation of monitoring of threatened species, monitoring for early detection of invasive species or the investment of limited conservation efforts. Virgilio finished his PhD in 2008 on “Conservation management of freshwater systems in the Mediterranean basin”. After than, Virgilio moved to Australia where he spent 6 years (2009-2014) on two postdoctoral positions at the University of Queensland and the Australian Rivers Institute (Griffith University). Since then he has worked on decision theory applied to conservation and rehabilitation planning in freshwater ecosystems at different spatial scales from single catchments to broad conservation assessment, also using and accommodating Marxan to the needs and particularities of freshwater ecosystems.

Alessia Kockel, Canada

Alessia is a marine biologist and a scuba instructor who is dedicated to supporting projects and programs in marine conservation and fisheries management. Most of her research and work to date has centered on planning, managing, and monitoring marine protected areas (MPA), particularly in the context of tropical developing countries. Most recently, her research has focused on strategies to recognize, include, and incorporate the needs and priorities of fishing communities in systematic conservation planning. Visit her personal website here.

Trevor Wiens, Alberta, Canada

Trevor Wiens has worked with GIS and environmental data for more than 25 years. He has a MSc. from the University of Alberta in biogeography,  has taught GIS for various institutions and owns and operates Apropos Information Systems. Trevor first started working with Marxan in 2010 and developed modules for GRASS GIS to make the creation of Marxan input files easier for GRASS users. In 2011 Trevor released Qmarxan, a QGIS plugin for the preparation of Marxan input data and creation of input files. For the latest versions of QGIS and ArcMap Trevor has created the QMarxan and ArcMarxan toolboxes. For more information on these tools go here.

Jennifer McGowan, U.S.A

Jennifer is the Spatial Planning Technical Coordinator with The Nature Conservancy based in Washington DC. She is interested in the value of science to make robust decisions and outcome focused planning. She has invest much of her time into and building capacity for NGOs and governments in the use of decision support tools, such as Marxan.

Leif Olson, Alberta, Canada

Leif Olson, PhD, has worked as a researcher studying human-bear interactions in the Waterton National Park, as a consultant to Saint Lawrence Islands National Park summarizing breeding bird diversity across Ontario, and as a consultant with Environment Canada calculating road fragmentation indices across Canada. His current work at O2 Planning + Design Inc. focuses on the development of systematic land-use planning and multivariate decision-making processes, using spatial, statistical, and graphical methods to guide and explore complex and wide-ranging social and environmental issues.