Mark Stanaway's PhD is on ‘Surveillance System Evaluation and Optimisation for Emergency Plant Pests'.

For the past eight years, Mark has worked with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries biosecurity unit and was pleased to take the opportunity offered by the CRC PhD scholarship to tackle some statistical problems that he thinks will improve the Department's surveillance program.

Mark's PhD is building on his undergraduate degree in population ecology and several years' postgraduate study in modelling insect incursions.

"I find the dynamic process of incursion to be one of the most fascinating ecological problems," he says.