Ana M. M. Sequeira

Assoc Prof Ana Sequeira is a Group Leader for the Research School of Biology at Australia’s National University, and the Founder, Lead Coordinator, and Research Director of MegaMove (megamove.org), a scientific project involving hundreds of researchers from around the world and endorsed by the United Nations as part of its Decade for Ocean Science. She is also the Lead Investigator in the GAT (Gathaagudu Animal Tracking) Project focused on tracking sharks, turtles and dugongs in the World Heritage Area of Shark Bay in Western Australia, working directly with the Traditional Owners of the region - the Malgana Peoples.

Ana is world-renowned for pioneering the development of global distribution models for highly migratory species and the creation of global collaborative networks to advance the global conservation of marine megafauna. She has developed important empirical research documenting marine megafauna movement, and publishes work that champions global data-sharing and the creation of collaborative networks to advance our scientific understanding of the movements of marine megafauna and conservation options for many of these threatened species. She also leads her own field expeditions to track marine megafauna species in the wild, and has worked with a range of species across her career, including sharks, turtles, sealions, penguins, sea otters, and dugongs.

Her contributions to the field have seen her being awarded the Fenner Medal 2024 by the Australian Academy of Sciences, being a finalist for the HBF Mid-Career Scientist of the Year 2022 (Premier Awards in Western Australia), and receiving the Early Career Research Award from the International Biologging Society 2021, among multiple commendation certificates and best presentation awards throughout the years.

She has secured several millions of dollars in highly competitive funding and philanthropic grants, including from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project and DECRA fellowship), a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation from the Pew Charitable Trusts and field work expedition funding from the Jock Clough Marine Foundation.

Ana is particularly interested in the development of models to assist in understanding the marine environment, with a strong emphasis on supporting marine spatial planning and conservation. She leads a research team at the Australia National University focused on developing new analytical methods to support the conservation of marine megafauna. Together with her team, Ana really enjoys being out and about in the field surrounded by the deep blue and charismatic creatures!