As a girl growing up in the urban jungle in Hong Kong, the vast open plain and millions of migrating wildebeests of Masai Mara felt unreachable yet incredibly enchanting to me. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to set my first step in Africa through a Kenya-Tanzania field trip during my undergraduate study in ecology. The memory of seeing eye-to-eye with the first cheetah in my life is still vivid and unforgettable. 

My passion for Africa had eventually developed into seven years of PhD and postdoctoral study in South Africa, focusing on the behaviour of lions and their spatio-behavioural interactions with large herbivorous prey under the theory of "The Landscape of Fear".  My study involved GPS tracking and statistical modelling of the space us, habitat selection and movement of animals to understand how the behaviour of lions shape predation risks in the landscapes and how prey avoid predation with trade-offs between predator avoidance and foraging.

I visited New Zealand for a conference during my PhD study and travelled in the country for a month. The uniqueness and endemism of the island are so fascinating and impossible to forget, I decided to relocate to New Zealand after my South African journey, wanting to learn more about the environment and settle permanently.

I undertook an MSc study in biosecurity and conservation during COVID, so I could retrain and upskill in the New Zealand ecosystems. I started my second postdoc at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research (MWLR) after the study and transitioned into my current researcher - wildlife ecologist position. My MSc aimed to understand the detectability of kiore (Rattus exulans), an invasive yet taonga species in Māori culture, on offshore islands (D'Urville and Slipper Island). As an ecologist in the wildlife ecology and management team in MWLR, I am involved in a range of studies on the invasive mammalian predators, including the development of a non-lethal management tool for cats and the behaviour of feral cats on Rakiura, Stewart Island, and modelling and understanding the ecological drivers of cat densities in the country.