Amellia Redfearn is a CEAT Emerging Leader, and received a scholarship to attend evokeAG 2020.
Growing up in Sydney, there were few opportunities for Amellia to experience agriculture firsthand. However, her uncle had a farm, which is where Amellia’s passion for agriculture was born. She then attended an agricultural high school, where she discovered how many career paths existed in the agriculture space.
Amellia’s primary interest is in the welfare of production animals, which stemmed from her love of animals more generally. At university, animal health and welfare was her focus. In 2017, she graduated from The University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Animal and Veterinary Bioscience, First Class Honours.
Amellia is now undertaking a PhD with CSIRO and The University of New England in Armidale, NSW. Her work focuses on ewe behaviour and metabolism before lambing, and how this relates to birth difficulty, and in turn, lamb survival. As part of this, she is investigating the use of on-animal sensors, and their ability to capture behavioural data in place of traditional video annotation methods.
Following her PhD, Amellia plans to work on bridging the gap between experimental science and on-farm application.
“I hope to contribute to the applied animal welfare space – researchers need to work together with producers to address the goals that we have, while keeping in mind the practicality and access to resources they have”, she said.
In attending EvokeAG, Amellia is excited to meet like-minded people across a range of professional areas, including scientists, managers of tech companies, producers, students and entrepreneurs. “This event gives us all an opportunity to make connections and find people we want to team up with in the future”, she said.
Image credit: Dominic Niemeyer, CSIRO