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Draft:Alec Philip Christie

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  • Comment: YouTube and interviews are NOT reliable, independent sources. Theroadislong (talk) 15:36, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Alec P. Christie
Alma materUniversity of St Andrews, University of Cambridge
Scientific career
FieldsConservation Biology
Thesis Determining the biases and consistencies in the evidence for conservation
Doctoral advisorWilliam J. Sutherland, Tatsuya Amano
Websitewww.alecresearch.com

Alec Philip Christie is an Imperial College Research Fellow at Imperial College London Centre for Environmental Policy, a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge Department of Zoology, and a bye-fellow at Downing College, Cambridge.

Education

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Christie completed his PhD in Zoology in April 2021 on 'Determining the biases and consistencies in the evidence for conservation'.[1] at University of Cambridge Department of Zoology under the supervision of Professor William J. Sutherland and Dr Tatsuya Amano funded by a NERC studentship. In 2022, he also completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge. Previously, he obtained a BSc Hons in Marine Biology in 2017 from the University of St Andrews.

Research

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Christie's research interests revolve around improving the use of evidence to make decisions focused on the discipline of conservation science. He is known for his research into the biases in the scientific literature pertaining to the effectiveness of interventions to conserve biodiversity, including both biases relating to experimental and observational study designs,[2][3] as well as geographic and taxonomic biases.[4][5][6][7] Much of his research has focused on the Conservation Evidence.[8] project, which summarises the scientific evidence on the effects of conservation actions on biodiversity-related outcomes and promotes evidence-based conservation amongst conservation practitioners, funders, scientific journals, and policymakers. His work has therefore focused extensively on the topic of evidence-based conservation[9][10] and is currently working on evaluating the impact of evidence-based practice on conservation outcomes and how Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models can accelerate evidence synthesis.[11][12] He has been cited 1,544 times, an h-index of 16, and an i10-index of 19.                    

Research career

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After his PhD, Christie held a postdoctoral associate position at the University of Cambridge Department of Zoology from April to September 2021, working on the Biosecurity Research Initiative at St Catherine's (BioRISC) project on methods of dynamic meta-analysis.[13][14] Christie was then awarded a Henslow Research Fellow to join Downing College, Cambridge from October 2021-2024 funded by the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He served as a member of the Governing Body and trustee of Downing College and as an undergraduate tutor during this time. He is a member of the British Ecological Society's Review College, a reviewer for the Daphne Jackson Trust Fellowship.

Honours and awards

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Christie was part of the Conservation Evidence team that won the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Impact and Engagement in 2023.[15] He also came second in the UK's Doctoral Researcher Awards 2021 and was runner-up in the Best Poster Prize at the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting 2018. During his undergraduate, he won 22 undergraduate prizes including Society of Biology Top Student Award.

Books, reports and talks

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He has co-authored the book: Transforming Conservation: A Practical Guide to Evidence and Decision Making by William J. Sutherland, contributing to Chapters 3, 4 and 12. He also contributed to the Conservation Evidence synopsis Coral Conservation: Global evidence for the effects of actions.[16] He gave a talk at the 'Delivering the effectiveness revolution in conservation: lessons from organisations, policy makers and funders’ workshop at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative in July 2024[17] organised by Conservation Evidence, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and TRAFFIC. PeerJ spoke to Christie and his co-author Thomas White about their published research paper 'Reducing publication delay to improve the efficiency and impact of conservation science' in 2022.[18] He also featured on WILDLABS Variety Hour in 2024[19] with colleague Samuel Reynolds on building an AI-assisted evidence synthesis pipeline using Large Language Models. In 2021, he also gave an online seminar at University of Queensland's Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science (CBCS).[20]

Media appearances

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Christie appeared on Series 17 Episode 80 of the ITV quiz gameshow The Chase on the 13th December 2024. His work was featured in a short film: The Evidence Effect[21] starring Iolo Williams and Sir David Attenborough and related University of Cambridge research story.[22] He also produced the mini-documentary series Cambridge ZooCasts interviewing graduate students at the University of Cambridge Department of Zoology on their research projects.[23] Christie's co-authored research that looked at the phenomenon of toads climbing trees[24] was mentioned on BBC Springwatch,[25] and reported in the Guardian,[26] the Independent,[27] and BBC,[28] BBC Countryfile.[29] and BBC Newsround[30]

References

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  1. ^ Alec, Christie (2021-04-22). Determining the biases and consistencies in the evidence for conservation. Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository (Thesis). doi:10.17863/CAM.68583. Archived from the original on 2024-09-08.
  2. ^ Christie, Alec P.; Abecasis, David; Adjeroud, Mehdi; Alonso, Juan C.; Amano, Tatsuya; Anton, Alvaro; Baldigo, Barry P.; Barrientos, Rafael; Bicknell, Jake E.; Buhl, Deborah A.; Cebrian, Just; Ceia, Ricardo S.; Cibils-Martina, Luciana; Clarke, Sarah; Claudet, Joachim (2020-12-11). "Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences". Nature Communications. 11 (1): 6377. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11.6377C. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20142-y. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 7733498. PMID 33311448.
  3. ^ Christie, Alec P.; Amano, Tatsuya; Martin, Philip A.; Shackelford, Gorm E.; Simmons, Benno I.; Sutherland, William J. (2019). "Simple study designs in ecology produce inaccurate estimates of biodiversity responses". Journal of Applied Ecology. 56 (12): 2742–2754. Bibcode:2019JApEc..56.2742C. doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13499. ISSN 1365-2664.
  4. ^ Hordern, E.; White, T.B.; Berthinussen, A.; Smith, R.K.; Sutherland, W.J.; Christie, A.P. (2024). "Prioritizing future evidence needs for marine and freshwater mammal conservation action". Animal Conservation (preprint). doi:10.1111/acv.13003. ISSN 1469-1795.
  5. ^ Miller, James; White, Thomas B.; Christie, Alec P. (2023). "Parachute conservation: Investigating trends in international research". Conservation Letters. 16 (3): e12947. Bibcode:2023ConL...16E2947M. doi:10.1111/conl.12947. ISSN 1755-263X.
  6. ^ Christie, Alec P.; Amano, Tatsuya; Martin, Philip A.; Petrovan, Silviu O.; Shackelford, Gorm E.; Simmons, Benno I.; Smith, Rebecca K.; Williams, David R.; Wordley, Claire F. R.; Sutherland, William J. (2020-08-01). "Poor availability of context-specific evidence hampers decision-making in conservation". Biological Conservation. 248: 108666. Bibcode:2020BCons.24808666C. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108666. ISSN 0006-3207.
  7. ^ Christie, Alec P.; Amano, Tatsuya; Martin, Philip A.; Petrovan, Silviu O.; Shackelford, Gorm E.; Simmons, Benno I.; Smith, Rebecca K.; Williams, David R.; Wordley, Claire F. R.; Sutherland, William J. (2021). "The challenge of biased evidence in conservation". Conservation Biology. 35 (1): 249–262. Bibcode:2021ConBi..35..249C. doi:10.1111/cobi.13577. ISSN 1523-1739. PMID 32583521.
  8. ^ "We summarise the documented evidence for the effectiveness of conservation actions". Conservation Evidence. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  9. ^ Christie, Alec P.; Morgan, William H.; Salafsky, Nick; White, Thomas B.; Irvine, Robyn; Boenisch, Nicolas; Chiaravalloti, Rafael M.; Kincaid, Kate; Rezaie, Ali Mohammad; Yamashita, Hiromi; Sutherland, William J. (2023). "Assessing diverse evidence to improve conservation decision-making". Conservation Science and Practice. 5 (10): e13024. Bibcode:2023ConSP...5E3024C. doi:10.1111/csp2.13024. ISSN 2578-4854.
  10. ^ Christie, Alec P.; Downey, Harriet; Frick, Winifred F.; Grainger, Matthew; O'Brien, David; Tinsley-Marshall, Paul; White, Thomas B.; Winter, Michael; Sutherland, William J. (2022). "A practical conservation tool to combine diverse types of evidence for transparent evidence-based decision-making". Conservation Science and Practice. 4 (1): e579. Bibcode:2022ConSP...4E.579C. doi:10.1111/csp2.579. ISSN 2578-4854.
  11. ^ "Downing Fellow's AI project receives funding from University of Cambridge". www.dow.cam.ac.uk. Downing College Cambridge. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  12. ^ "AI-Driven Conservation CoPilot: Revolutionising Biodiversity Solutions". AI for Climate & Nature. 2024-08-12. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  13. ^ Shackelford, Gorm E.; Martin, Philip A.; Hood, Amelia S. C.; Christie, Alec P.; Kulinskaya, Elena; Sutherland, William J. (2021-02-17). "Dynamic meta-analysis: a method of using global evidence for local decision making". BMC Biology. 19 (1): 33. doi:10.1186/s12915-021-00974-w. ISSN 1741-7007. PMC 7888140. PMID 33596922.
  14. ^ Martin, Philip A.; Christie, Alec P.; Shackelford, Gorm E.; Hood, Amelia S. C.; Wang, Shengyu; Li, Bo; Morgan, William; Lee, Madeleine; Aldridge, David C.; Sutherland, William J. (2023-06-20). "Flexible synthesis can deliver more tailored and timely evidence for research and policy". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 120 (25): e2221911120. Bibcode:2023PNAS..12021911M. doi:10.1073/pnas.2221911120. PMC 10288617. PMID 37314936.
  15. ^ "Established Academic 2023". www.cam.ac.uk. 2023-12-13. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  16. ^ "Conservation Evidence: Evidence Data". Conservation Evidence. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  17. ^ Cambridge Conservation Initiative - CCI (2024-07-17). 6 Alec Christie Making decisions from evidence. Retrieved 2025-01-14 – via YouTube.
  18. ^ PeerJ (2021-11-02). Author Interview: Reducing publication delay to improve the efficiency of conservation science. Retrieved 2025-01-14 – via YouTube.
  19. ^ WILDLABS.NET (2024-07-04). The WILDLABS Variety Hour: June 2024. Retrieved 2025-01-14 – via YouTube.
  20. ^ UQ CBCS (2021-10-04). 20210928 Alec Christie. Retrieved 2025-01-14 – via YouTube.
  21. ^ Cambridge University (2022-06-29). The Evidence Effect: How a conservation revolution is protecting biodiversity. Retrieved 2025-01-14 – via YouTube.
  22. ^ Garget, Jacqueline (2022-06-29). "It's time to look at the evidence". www.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  23. ^ "Cambridge ZooCasts - Series 2". YouTube. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  24. ^ Petrovan, Silviu O.; Al-Fulaij, Nida; Christie, Alec; Andrews, Henry (2022-07-06). "Why link diverse citizen science surveys? Widespread arboreal habits of a terrestrial amphibian revealed by mammalian tree surveys in Britain". PLOS ONE. 17 (7): e0265156. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1765156P. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0265156. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 9258833. PMID 35793361.
  25. ^ blogorgonopsid (2022-07-16). Springwatch 2022 - Toads in the trees. Retrieved 2025-01-14 – via YouTube.
  26. ^ Abdi, Sundus (2022-07-06). "Scientists puzzled by toads squatting in dormouse nests high in trees". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  27. ^ Beament, Emily (2022-07-06). "The Independent". Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  28. ^ "University of Cambridge researchers find toads up trees". BBC News. 2022-07-07. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  29. ^ "Toads found living in trees, according wildlife charity". Countryfile.com. 2022-07-20. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  30. ^ "Scientists surprised to find toads living in trees". BBC Newsround. 2022-07-07. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
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