Dr. Carissa Klein of Australia was awarded the APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (ASPIRE), sponsored by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and Elsevier. The award was presented by Minister Gusti M. Hatta, Indonesian Ministry of Research and Technology.
Dr. Klein's selection is a result of her research with the University of Queensland that uniquely addresses the issue of sustainable ocean development by striking a balance between biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic viability.
This is one of the issues Dr. Klein's research effectively addresses. Her work has helped two APEC member economies - Malaysia and the United States - sustainably zone the ocean for fishing and conservation. Using spatial conservation prioritization, her research informed a systematic design of a network of marine protected areas along California's central coast that accounted for commercial and recreational fisheries in the region.
The APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research, and Education is an annual award that recognises young scientists. Each member economy, through its representative on the APEC Policy Partnership on Science, Technology and Innovation (PPSTI), is invited to nominate one young scientist under the age of 40 to be considered for the ASPIRE Prize. The US $25,000 ASPIRE prize is sponsored by Wiley and Elsevier, two of the world's leading publishers of scholarly scientific knowledge.
