PENANG, 30 January 2016 – Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) together with The University of Queensland Australia and Australian Government Department of Education and Training will be organising a seminar by Professor Hugh Possingham entitled "Formulating and Solving Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Conservation Problems Within Economic And Food Production Constraints" on the 4^th February 2016 at the University Conference Hall (DPU) USM from 9.00 am – 12.00 pm.

Hugh Possingham serves as a Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Ecology at The University of Queensland Australia, and is a distinguished international professor best known for his work in conservation biology. He has co-authored 531 refereed publications covered by the Web of Science (24 in Science Nature) and has more than 17,500 Web of Science citations.

He currently directs two research centres, the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Environmental Decisions and The National Environmental Science Programme Hub For Threatened Species Recovery, both worth $20 and 60$ million respectively, and he has supervised more than 84 PhD students and 45 postdoctoral fellows.

In his talk, he will discuss how he and his colleagues have been formulating and solving nature conservation problems, and in particular, he will show how their software is being used to create marine and terrestrial landscape plans in over 150 countries.

He will also demonstrate how systematic conservation planning thinking and tools can be used to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services while achieving economic outcomes, and the talk will include examples from South East Asia, from the forests of Borneo to the seas of the Coral Triangle.

During the seminar, the Deputy Director of Department of Education and Training Australian High Commission Kuala Lumpur will also be present to provide a talk on 'Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships' - a scholarship programme from the Australian Government.

Text: Hafiz Meah Ghouse Meah