Rate My Professor Andrea Griffin

Andrea Griffin is an Associate Professor in Wildlife Conservation Science in the School of Environmental and Life Sciences, College of Engineering, Science and Environment, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She earned her PhD from Macquarie University in 2002, receiving the Vice-Chancellor's Commendation for Outstanding PhD, and trained in biology, animal behaviour, and ecology at the Universities of Lausanne, Geneva, and Zurich in Switzerland, followed by a Swiss National Postdoctoral Fellowship at McGill University in Canada. She joined the University of Newcastle in 2005 as an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, advanced to a lectureship in 2009, served as Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences from 2015 to 2020 and in the School of Environmental and Life Sciences from 2021 to 2022, and has been Associate Professor since 2023. Griffin has supervised five PhD completions and currently supervises eleven higher degree research students.

Her research focuses on behavioural ecology and wildlife conservation science, examining how animals adapt to environmental changes via cognition, learning, and behaviour. She pioneered conditioning techniques to train captive-bred, predator-naive marsupials to recognize predators and demonstrated social learning in marsupials. Her studies on invasive common mynas revealed cognitive adaptations to human trapping, improving management practices. She leads projects on shorebird movement and foraging ecology using Motus telemetry, stable isotopes, eDNA, and AI-driven acoustic monitoring, alongside research on contaminants' impacts on sexual selection and competition. With over 100 journal articles, her publications have accumulated more than 5,300 citations and an h-index of 35. Notable works include 'Learning and conservation' (2019, Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior), 'The innovative bird: Contextual determinants and underpinning mechanisms of innovative foraging' (2016), and 'Social learning of antipredator behaviour in a marsupial' (2003, Animal Behaviour). Griffin has secured over $5.3 million in funding across 60 grants. Awards include the College of Engineering, Science and Environment Award for Outstanding Contributions to Higher Degree Research Student Supervision (2022), Women in Research Fellowship (2020), Eminent Scientist with WWF-Australia (2021), Vice-Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2012), and multiple best student paper awards (2001). She has delivered over 40 guest lectures, advises councils on pest management, and serves WWF-Australia in an advisory role.