Evolutionary and Conservation Genomics Research Group
Emily Roycroft – Group Leader
Emily is a Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University. She did her PhD at the University of Melbourne, followed by four years at the Australian National University working on evolutionary genomics of Australian biodiversity, along the way ‘resurrecting’ the Gould’s mouse from extinction. She won an ARC DECRA Fellowship in 2023, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Fellowship in 2024, and is passionate advocate for equity and diversity in science.
Charlotte Drury – PhD student (2025 – )
(Honours First Class, 2024)
Charlotte completed her honours supervised by Emily at ANU in 2024, and has made the move to Monash for her PhD. Charlotte is already a bioinformatics whiz, and is delving into macroevolutionary patterns of introgression in marsupials, genetic load on islands, as well as working on a mitochondrial genome reference database for Australian mammals to enable eDNA studies of threatened species.
Tucksaorn Bhummakasikara – PhD student (2025 – )
Tucksaorn (Orn) is applying genomic approaches to evaluate the success of genetic rescue and inform captive breeding in the threatened Pookila (New Holland mouse). Orn will also be investigating broad-scale population genomics of the Pookila, including the extinct Tasmanian population. Orn did her undergraduate and Masters degree at Mahidol University in Thailand, and is an experienced conservation geneticist, having worked in the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation in Thailand for the past 8 years.
Camille Kynoch – PhD student (2024 – )
Primary supervisor: Prof. Richard Reina
Camille is investigating the impact of climate-induced male scarcity in the threatened Australian flatback sea turtle, including applying genetic and genomic approaches to explore population genetics, parentage, and the relationship between genetic diversity and fitness.
Max Guzenko – Research Assistant (2025 – )
(Honours First Class, 2024)
Max completed their honours in 2024 at Monash University investigating the form, function and development of primate canines with the Evans lab. They became keenly interested in bioinformatics and conservation genomics following their undergraduate project on recombination rates in the endangered Macquarie perch, and now work with us as a Research Assistant.
Cody Brown – Honours student (2025)
Cody has joined our lab for his honours year, and is working on comparative phylogeography, genetic diversity, and demographic history of co-distributed small mammals across northern Australia. Cody is particularly interested in testing for patterns of concordance/discordance across biogeographic barriers in the delicate mouse group, chestnut mice, and rock rats.
Emily Blackburn – Honours student (2025)
Emily joins our lab for her honours year after completing a conservation internship with Zoos Victoria, where she conducted a research project on supplementary feeding of the lowland Leadbeater’s Possum. Now Emily will be continuing her work on Leadbeater’s, assessing the genetic diversity of the lowland population to identify ideal candidates for translocation and genetic rescue. Emily’s project is jointly supervised by Sasha Pavlova, Diana Robledo Ruiz (Monash), Dan Harley and Arabella Eyre (Zoos Vic).
Ella Dunn – Undergraduate Research Student
Ella has joined our research group for her Semester 1, 2025 GEN3990 research project. Ella is exploring genetic divergence between island and mainland populations of Australian mammals, to test predictors of genetic divergence on islands.
Externally supervised PhD students
Joely Echalar – PhD student (April 2023 – present)
Primary supervisor: Dr Sally Potter
Joely is based at Macquarie University in Sydney, and is focusing on the genomics introgression and the role of chromosomal rearrangements in speciation in the Australian delicate mouse group – one of our favourite study systems!
Kate O’Hara – PhD student (2022 – present)
Primary supervisor: Prof Craig Moritz
(Honours First Class, 2021)
Kate is based at ANU in Canberra, and also did her Honours at ANU supervised by Craig and Emily. Kate’s PhD focuses on the genomic and epigenomic evolution of a parthenogenetic Australian gecko, Heteronotia binoei.
Past Students
Ching Ching Lau – Masters by Research (2022 – 2023)
Ching Ching did her MSc in Quantitative Biology & Bioinformatics (Advanced) at ANU, supervised by Emily and co-supervised by Craig Moritz. Check out the now-published paper from on her Masters project here.
Following her Masters, Ching Ching continued working with us as a Research Assistant, and she continues to collaborate with us while based at ANU.
Roycroft Lab 