Larissa is a Ph.D. candidate at QUT, and her main research area is modelling complex systems applied to ecology and environmental policy. In her Ph.D., supervised by Prof. Michael Bode, Dr Kate Helmstedt and Prof. Kerrie Wilson, she is undertaking her research as part of the ARC Special Research Initiative in Excellence in Antarctic Science, Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF). She is investigating how internal and external parameters of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) affect Antarctica’s governance, aiming to build a model that can reproduce the political dynamics of the ATS, make predictions about possible collaborations and political supports, and analyze if and how we can make de decision-making process inside the ATS more effective. 

Larissa has a background in theoretical physics and is passionate about interdisciplinary research. During her Masters, she adapted the spatial model for finite genome from de Aguiar et al. to perform a systematic study of hybridization and extinction events to understand what parameters are significant drivers in diminishing biodiversity.