Dr Kylie Brice
I am the Senior Administration Officer, Industry and Engagement. As well as being the first point of contact for the CoE Plant Success projects at the WSU node, I work closely with academic staff to support industry stakeholder engagement and coordinate events, meetings, on-site visits by industry partners, symposia, conferences, and workshops across the portfolio.
Investigators
Distinguished Prof Ian Wright
I lead the WSU node of the ARC Centre for Plant Success. My primary interest is on understanding variation in plant functional traits, and how trait variation relates to plant ecological strategies. For the Centre my group is focusing on adaptations to temperature and water stress within the Australian flora.
Honorary Prof Brian Atwell
Based at Macquarie University, my research focuses on abiotic stress tolerance in cultivated plants and eucalypts. Principally by comparing crop species with their Australian wild relatives, I seek to identify the genetic basis of physiological and biochemical tolerance to heat, drought and salinity.
Prof Brendan Choat
My research centres on the physiological ecology of plants with a primary focus on plant hydraulics, water relations and functional anatomy. I am studying how the structure of the xylem achieves a compromise between features that promote efficiency of transport to the leaves while preserving safety from cavitation.
Assoc Prof Rachael Gallagher
My primary interest is plant conservation, particularly under climate change. My main research areas are conservation biology, ecology, plant functional traits, biogeography, macroecology, species adaptation to climate change and global change biology.
Dr Adam Frew
I am an ecologist focusing on the interactions between soil microbiota, plants, and insect herbivores. A major theme of my group’s research is understanding the ecology of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and their effects on plant outcomes.
Prof Jeff Powell
I'm interested in the processes underlying the assembly of microbial communities and how these processes can be manipulated to achieve beneficial outcomes. A goal of my research is to understand the contributions of microbial biodiversity to the productivity of managed and natural systems and to how these systems respond to environmental change.
Assoc Prof Jonathan Plett
The aim of my research program is to compare and contrast the genetic traits in plants that render them susceptible to colonization by mutualistic versus pathogenic microbes. Further, I study the countermeasures used by microbes to manipulate the outcome of these interactions.
Assoc Prof Paul Rymer
I am plant evolutionary ecologist investigating biological adaptations and biodiversity. My group fuses ecology, physiology and genetics to provide fundamental insights into biological processes and the foundation for improved management of real-world issues.
Prof Ben Smith
I am an ecologist and modeller with a focus on climate-ecosystem modelling for global change assessment. I led development of the widely-used terrestrial biosphere model, LPJ-GUESS. I am Director of Research at HIE and lead the Land and Primary Industries Network of the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub.
PhD candidates
PhD Raguram Chinnarajalu
My research focuses on improving water-use efficiency in sorghum by integrating field experiments on irrigation efficiency, crop model calibration, and glasshouse studies linking leaf traits to intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE).
Anoban Karunananthan
My research focuses on developing a unified framework for understanding root form and function. I aim to unravel the complexity of plant carbon investment in roots, emphasizing the dynamic interactions between plants and fungi in the rhizosphere.
Anu Middha
My research focuses on identifying the distinctive cuticular features that contribute to increased tolerance in certain accessions of Themeda triandra. I aim to unravel the biochemical mechanisms underlying leaf cuticles, specifically identifying the components of cuticle wax that are most responsive to heat and water stress.
Jiahao Wen
In my search I will be investigating adaptations to environmental stresses in Australian native species (e.g. heat, drought and low soil nutrients).
Postdoctoral researchers
Beatrice Harrison Day
My research at HIE examines plant drought responses from the roots upwards, with a focus on whole-plant hydraulics, root physiology, and functional anatomy.
Dr Tiantian Pan
Tiantian is a postdoc studying the ecology and evolution of climate adaptation in Australian and worldwide species. In 2026, she completed her PhD, which focused on leaf hydraulic anatomy in eucalypts.
Dr Travis Britton
I'm working on the ecophysiological adapations of eucalypts to drought and heat stress. My past research interests have largely focused on understanding how ecological interactions among neighbouring plants modify the direct effects of environmental change in forest communities.
Dr Vinod Jacob
In collaboration with Associate Investigator Prof. Brian Atwell (Macquarie University), my current research is aimed at better understanding ecological and physiological adaptations to heat and water stress in target clades of Australian Andropogoneae grasses with a primary focus on plant hydraulics and gas exchange.
Past members
Dr Zhangying Lei
Now a lecturer at Northwest A & F University, Yangling, China
Dr Yuki Tsujii
Now a Research Fellow at Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan
Nodoka Izumi
Nodoka has a position at the Japan Science and Technology Agency. She is interested in structure-function relationships in plants such as xylem anatomy, particularly how variation in parenchyma structures is associated with xylem functions.
Dr Suz Everingham
My position is an Associate Lecturer at Macquarie University. My research uses large-scale data to combine metrics of drought exposure, drought sensitivity and plant adaptive capacity to create a framework for the extinction risk of plants due to drought. This drought-risk framework will allow more confident predictions of plant extinction risk under climate change scenarios as part of the IUCN Red Listing process.
Dr Emma Sumner
I’m a plant ecologist and now working with Rachael Gallagher as a Post-doctoral researcher at HIE. My research focuses on heat and drought adaptations among Australian native grasses in the Andopogoneae tribe including wild sorghum and Kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra).
Dr Shubham Chhajed
I'm studying whole-plant ecophysiology and its relation with plant allometry, growth and climate using first principles. I'm also interested in plant carbon-water relations across spatial and temporal ecological scales.
Dr Andrea Westerband
Now an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. I´m interested in understanding how plants respond and adapt to the environment
and to understand how phenotypic variation influences various biological processes, including population and community dynamics, species interactions, and ecosystem scale fluxes.
Dr Kasia Ziemińska
I'm a plant ecologist and a wood anatomist passionate about understanding how anatomical diversity drives tree functions and ecology. My current research investigates how anatomy and tree growth are interlinked with each other.