Closing the Knowledge-Implementation Gap in Conservation Science: Interdisciplinary Evidence Transfer Across Sectors and Spatiotemporal Scales

Dr. Catarina C. Ferreira is a broadly trained conservation biologist, with twenty years of international experience in the research, project management and policy arenas. She holds two MSc degrees in Applied Ecology (University of Porto, Portugal) and Wildlife Management (Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain), a PhD in Biology from Castilla-La Mancha University (Spain) and has done 5 years of postdoctoral research between Trent University (Ontario, Canada) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ (Leipzig, Germany). As an academic, she developed a strong scientific background specializing in terrestrial ecology and wildlife management, having dedicated her career to advance our understanding of the impacts human-induced stressors have on biodiversity. She has published over 30 scientific papers in peer-reviewed top-tier journals, as well as contributed to or co-authored 4 books and participated in multiple science outreach activities. She received numerous grants throughout her career, including a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie International Outgoing Fellowship between 2015-2017 and a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellowship in 2020. As a conservation scientist, she has a rich cross-sectoral experience in the environmental public, private and not-for-profit sectors in Europe and North America, where she acted as a knowledge broker to support evidence-informed policy decisions. Notably, among other roles, she was the Assistant Director of the first and only Iberian Lynx Captive Breeding Centre in Portugal in 2009-2010, and the European Biodiversity Conservation Coordinator at IUCN in Belgium between 2018 and 2020. She is currently working for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as a Policy and Program Analyst of cross-cutting plant health issues.

Dr. Cornelya F. C. Klütsch works at the interface of molecular ecology, genomics, and conservation. Her main research interests include the use of genetic and genomic tools to address applied and basic conservation as well as eco-evolutionary questions in wildlife species. She received her Master’s degree in zoology at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). Subsequently, she completed a PhD at the Alexander Koenig Research Museum and the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn (Germany). She then continued her research by pursuing international postdoctoral research positions at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH, Sweden) and at Trent University in Peterborough (Ontario, Canada). Currently, she is a Research Scientist in Molecular Ecology at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO, Norway) where she works in a transnational, interdisciplinary, and inter-sectorial framework on local, regional, and international conservation issues.