Rate My Professor Emma Carroll

Emma Carroll is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences within the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland. She completed her PhD in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland, followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship at the same institution. She subsequently held positions as a Research Fellow at the Scottish Oceans Institute, University of St Andrews, where she was awarded a Newton International Research Fellowship and a Marie Curie Research Fellowship. In 2017, she received a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship and returned to the University of Auckland to continue her research.

Dr Carroll is a molecular ecologist and statistical modeller who combines genomics, micro-chemical markers, and life history data to investigate natural populations, with a particular focus on marine mammals such as southern right whales. Her Rutherford Discovery Fellowship project, titled 'Family matters: developing close kin mark recapture methods to estimate key demographic parameters in natural populations,' develops Close-Kin Mark-Recapture (CKMR) methods integrated with genetic biomarkers to estimate abundance, survival, and growth rates. This work supports conservation management for recovering whale populations and aims to create generalised methodologies applicable to other species. She was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland and served as an Editorial Board member of Scientific Reports starting in 2016. Her career emphasises cross-disciplinary collaborations in statistical and molecular ecology.