Profile
Dr Maurizio Rossetto is our Senior Principal Research Scientist. He is a passionate researcher who utilises the best technologies to advance conservation in Australia and the world. Maurizio wasn’t always focused on plant life. In fact, he began his scientific career as a zoologist. It wasn’t until later that he discovered a fascination with plant DNA and it helps us understand how species move and respond to their environment.
Over twenty years ago Maurizio spent time studying rainforest ecology, inspired by the unique pockets of rainforest that remain in NSW known as the Big Scrub. From here, he has developed two main concepts for his work. The first is measuring biodiversity or understanding the current distribution of species. The second is measuring adaptation or understanding how and why species respond to changing environments.
Maurizio has helmed one of our flagship conservation programs, Restore & Renew, which began in 2015. The purpose of this project is to provide restoration practitioners with a tool that will help them to best rejuvenate and conserve our environments.
Maurizio offers invaluable insight into every project he is involved with. He continues to champion the importance of embracing, understanding and implementing the use of innovative and modern technologies in evolutionary ecology and biodiversity research.
Research Interests
The majority of my collaborative research projects revolve around a broad research vision: develop and apply research innovation to investigate the factors impacting on the spatio-temporal distribution and assembly of lineages. The vision can by summarized into two simple concepts:
1) describing and interpreting patterns of organismal diversity (measuring biodiversity);
2) describing and interpreting the fit of organisms to their environment (measuring adaptation). To achieve these objectives I integrate empirically obtained genetic, functional and environmental datasets.
Current Projects
Restore & Renew; Rainforest evolution; Contrasting temporal dynamics: drift or selection; Patterns of adaptation and admixture in the Sydney region.