Associate Professor Susie Hester

Biography

I am an applied economist and have worked almost exclusively on issues related to invasive-species management since 2002. This has largely been via my role as a Chief Investigator with the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA) at the University of Melbourne. I have been part of the CEBRA research team since 2009, work remotely from my office at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW. CEBRA assists the Australian government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) and the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries with their biosecurity risk analysis. Recent projects have involved reviewing methods and tools available for post-border surveillance and applying several of the tools to Australian biosecurity problems; investigating resource allocation problems in pest and disease management; understanding the value of passive surveillance, and incentives in biosecurity policy. As part of my biosecurity research I collaborate extensively with weed scientists, ecologists, mathematicians, veterinarians, agricultural scientists and natural resource managers.

I studied Economics (Hons) at the University of Western Australia and, after graduating, spent two years as a Research Officer with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics in Canberra. I arrived at the University of New England’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (now UNE Business School) in 1994, as an Associate Lecturer, before commencing a PhD in 1995.

Post-PhD I had research roles in several Weeds CRC projects in the UNE Business School, before joining the Australian Centre of Excellence for biosecurity risk analysis (now CEBRA). My expertise lies in interdisciplinary research projects in biosecurity. I am particularly passionate about maximising value for money from biosecurity budgets. I see this as intimately related to efficient policy design which has led to a novel body of work on incentives in biosecurity policy. I am currently working with experts from the Centre for Market Design (UMelb) and Monash University, and with staff in DAWE to improve the ‘incentive-compatibility’ of biosecurity policies.