IBREAM Directors

Monique Paris

Associate Professor - The Netherlands/Australia

Monique is the Co-founder and Director of IBREAM. She is a wildlife biologist who has specialized in many research fields (reproduction, immunology, nutrition, ethology). She holds a Ph.D. from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She has an active role in the current 4 IBREAM programs in terms of overall coordination, fundraising, and supervision.

Her appointment as Associate Professor at several Australian universities, and an Honorary Professorship status at the University of Pretoria, has given a solid base to IBREAM Ph.D. students (from 2011). She is now involved in animal welfare and ethics regulatory processes as well as establishing a new course in wildlife management.

Robert Millar

Professor - Pretoria SA, Edinburgh, UK

Professor Robert (Bob) Millar grew up in Zimbabwe where he developed a passion for African wildlife and studied Zoology, Botany, and Chemistry at the University of then Rhodesia and Nyasaland. He obtained a Masters in Biochemistry in London and his Ph.D. on the reproductive biology of the hyrax in Liverpool before moving into human biomedical research at the University of Cape Town, where he became Professor ad hominem. He then became Director of the MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit, UK, which comprises over 100 researchers and attracts about £5 million annual funding. Since April 2011 until 2017, he was Director of the Mammal Research Institute in Pretoria.

SIMON MARSH

United Kingdom

Simon started his career as an animal keeper, specialising in carnivores, and has held management positions in UK zoos and wildlife parks. He has more than 20 years’ experience in zoos, safari parks, sanctuaries, rehabilitation and conservation projects, both UK and overseas, particularly Africa. As a director of an animal welfare charity his passion for captive animal welfare goes hand in hand with his commitment to conserving species and habitats in the wild. Simon is a IUCN Canid Specialist Group member, chair of the Canid and Hyaenid Taxon Advisory Group for the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), and a UK zoo inspector.

Thomas Lehmberg

Denmark

Thomas has worked with site-level forest conservation and management for the Danish BirdLife-partner, DOF BirdLife, over the last 20 years, since 2006 as International Program Manager. His current projects are in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Nepal; and is holistic and pragmatic in nature involving a broad range of necessary stakeholders to ensure sustainability of both effort and impact. Pushing the ecosystem/landscape/site-level biodiversity conservation agenda as far as possible in a green development funding context.

Thomas holds a M.Sc. in avian tropical forest ecology and tropical biodiversity management from the University of Copenhagen. He also has a keen interest in facilitating organizational development processes, including participatory strategy formulation, staff management and team-building, M&E and financial management & administration.

Mark van Heukelum

The Netherlands

Mark is an enthusiastic, involved and experienced ecologist, with a great passion for the natural world. As a consultant working on water and nature development projects, he is specialized on topics like fish migration, wildlife corridors and habitat restauration. Mark is eager to involve people in wildlife (monitoring) projects, in order to create support. Examples are crowd sourced monitoring platforms, like www.wildspotter.nl & www.visspotter.nl. He has a creative mind, is a real team player and a skilful communicator.

Mark studied Forest & Nature Conservation (Msc) and Water Quality and Aquatic Ecology (Msc) at the Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He started the pygmy hippo research in Taï National Parc, Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 and is involved in the pygmy hippo program ever since.

Alan Trounson

Australia

Alan Trounson is Emeritus Professor Monash University and Distinguished Scientist, Hudson Institute for Medical Research, Clayton, Victoria, Australia, (www.hudson.org.au). He is the past president of the Californian Institute for Regenerative Medicine (2007-2014), the state’s $3 billion stem cell agency driving research in stem cell biology and facilitating the translation of stem cell discoveries into clinical therapies. He was one of the pioneers of human in vitro fertilisation (IVF) (1977-1996). He also impacted by pioneering somatic cell nuclear transfer for embryonic stem cells in mice, leading the Australian team cloning cattle for the Dairy Industry and initiating development of artificial breeding technologies for wombats, Black Rhinos, and the Australian frozen zoo for wild and endangered species. He is presently the founding CEO of Cartherics Pty Ltd. developing immune therapies for cancer.