Professor Michael Bunce
Chief Science Advisor, Te Papa Atawhai (the Department of Conservation), New Zealand
Mike completed his undergraduate degree at Lincoln University (NZ) in molecular biology and his PhD at the Australian National University. He undertook post-doctoral training at Oxford (UK) and McMaster (Canada) universities working with ancient DNA before moving to Perth, Western Australia in 2006 to start his own laboratory. In 2014 he founded Curtin University’s Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD) laboratory then spent time as Chief Scientist at the EPA before being seconded into the COVID-19 response where he worked with the Ministry of Health and ESR on genomics and wastewater projects to support the science response to the pandemic. Mike was appointed as Chief Science Advisor at Te Papa Atawhai (the Department of Conservation) in November 2022 and is based in Wellington, NZ. Through his research career Mike has developed and applied DNA techniques to characterise biological communities within a wide variety of biological samples from viruses and fossil bones, to seawater and ice cores. His research focus has spanned many areas of environmental science including; biodiversity assessment, archaeology, extinctions, food-webs, biosecurity, conservation genetics, viral evolution and endangered species detection – he has co-authored ~200 papers: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=YPoEsJcAAAAJ&hl