Alumni Profiles

Melvin Christopher Jenks Senior Scholars

Chris teaches and writes on the law of armed conflict. He is the co-author of a law of armed conflict textbook, co-editor of a forthcoming war crimes casebook, and served as a peer reviewer of the Talinn Manual on the international law applicable to cyber warfare.

He has published articles on drones, child soldiers, extraordinary rendition, law of war detention, targeting and government contractors. He has also spoken on those same topics at universities and institutes in Africa, Asia, Europe and Central and South America. Chris recently served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense on U.S. military security sector reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Prior to joining the SMU faculty, Chris served for over 20 years in the military. After graduating from West Point, he was commissioned as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. Chris served as a rifle platoon leader, executive officer and in battalion and brigade staff positions in the U.S., Europe, and in deployments to Kuwait and Bosnia.

Following graduation from law school, Chris transitioned to the U.S. Army JAG Corps and was assigned as the primary international and operational law advisor near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. During this assignment, he defended Status of Forces Agreement rights of American soldiers during South Korean interrogations and trials in high profile and politically sensitive criminal cases.

Following his return to the U.S. in 2003, Chris served as the lead prosecutor in the Army’s first counterterrorism case, a fully contested, classified court-martial of a soldier attempting to aid Al Qaeda. He coordinated the investigative efforts of 30 law enforcement agents from four separate federal agencies on three continents and the Department of Justice’s Counterterrorism section nominated him for the John Marshall award for interagency cooperation.

In 2004, he deployed to Mosul, Iraq and served as chief legal advisor to a unit of over 4000 soldiers. There he provided targeting advice for the employment of artillery, close air support and direct fire weapons during enemy engagements in a city of two million people. Chris also advised investigations and served as prosecutor for crimes against the civilian population, detainee abuse, and fratricide.

Before moving to Dallas, Chris was most recently stationed in Washington D.C., holding numerous positions, including attorney adviser at the Department of State and his most recent position as chief of the International Law Branch of the Office of The Judge Advocate General in the Pentagon.

While at the Department of State, Chris served at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York City and represented the U.S. during negotiations on cultural and humanitarian resolutions pending before the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly

As the Army’s international law branch chief, he oversaw the foreign exercise of criminal jurisdiction over US service members, represented the Department of Defence at status of forces agreement negotiations and served as the legal advisor to the U.S. Military Observers Group, which provides military officers to United Nations Missions around the world.

Chris’ goal in working with the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law is to identify criminal responsibility norms which will help further both the discussion and reconciliation of emerging technologies and accountability under the law of armed conflict.

Professor Marcia A. Zug Senior Scholars

Marcia is Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina. She teaches Family Law, Immigration Law, and American Indian law. Her work focuses on the treatment of Native American families and the removal of Indian children. In the United States, she has worked with national organizations, such as the National Indian Child Welfare Association and The Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and individual Indian tribes.

Her Fulbright scholarship will be a comparative project examining the different ways the United States and Australia have responded to the removal of indigenous children. Despite a very similar history, the two countries have a fairly different approach to addressing the break up of native families. Marcia hopes her research will help identify the most effective aspects of these different methods and suggest new ways of reducing indigenous child removals. She looks forward to working with her Australian colleagues on these important issues.

Sharon Davis Professional Scholars

“The Murray-Darling Basin is an important and iconic river basin, at both the national and international scale. It covers around 1 million square kilometers and produces approximately 40 per cent of Australia’s agricultural production. The Basin system also contains more than 30,000 wetlands and many ecological systems of international significance including 16 Ramsar Convention listed sites.”

Dr Sharon Davis, General Manager with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority will have the opportunity to contribute to the Harvard Water Initiative at Harvard University through a Fulbright Professional Scholarship.

Sharon’s research will share the Australian experience of setting sustainable water resource diversion limits, identify potential opportunities for future development, and evaluate the applicability of the approach used in the Murray-Darling Basin to other countries. “Australia is a recognised international leader in water resource management and has a significant history in water reform,” Sharon said. “Over the last 20 years Australia has made major steps forward in water resource management, most recently through the Commonwealth Water Act 2007, which requires sustainable water diversion limits to be set across the Murray-Darling Basin.” 

“The project is designed to contribute to advances in water resource management in Australia and internationally.” Sharon has a BA (Hons) (Physical Geography) Monash University and a PhD (Civ. Eng.) (Hydrology), Monash University. She received the Murray-Darling Basin Commission Leadership Award; is currently the leader of the Environmental Planning Team within the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and was a Member of the Murray-Darling Basin Reform Taskforce. She represented the Murray-Darling Basin Commission on the Mekong River Commission/Murray-Darling Basin Commission Strategic Liaison Partnership Mission in 2007.

In her spare time she enjoys skiing, bushwalking and trekking, adventure racing, triathlons, good coffee and travel. The prestigious Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and the U.S. Government in 1946. Aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it operates between the U.S. and 155 countries. In Australia, the scholarships are funded by the Australian and U.S. Governments and corporate partners and administered by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission in Canberra. Sharon is one of 26 talented Australians to be recognised as a Fulbright Scholar in 2011.

Damien Pearce Professional Scholars

“I aim to provide education and training that not only develops the skills and knowledge required to undertake a specific role description, but to also promote life-long learning and the transference of skills to new contexts.”

Damien Pearce, doctoral student in law enforcement education at the University of Southern Queensland, is the winner of the 2011 Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Vocational Education and Training (VET) sponsored by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

This Scholarship was established in 1995 to support the exchange of research and ideas in VET between Australia and the United States.Through his Fulbright, Damien will go to the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York, to undertake a comparative analysis of police education and training strategies used in Australian and the U.S. policing, from April for six months.

“Australian police are confronting increasingly complex and challenging environments of law enforcement,” Damien said.

“I aim to look at how police officers are trained in the U.S. and compare it with what we are doing in Australia. I will look for methods and strategies that they use in the U.S, to see if there are ways that we can enhance our education and training.” He will also investigate the contemporary design of the police curriculum, the practical training approaches used by police educators and look at how contemporary adult teaching methods are applied to enhance police education in the U.S.

Damien has a Master of Educational Leadership from the University of Canberra; a Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Teaching and Learning from the Canberra Institute of Technology; and trade certification as a Fitter Armourer attained while serving in the Australian Army. Damien has a long time relationship with youth development through Scouts Australia. In his spare time he enjoys outdoor activities.

The prestigious Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind, created by U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and the U.S. Government in 1946. Aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it operates between the U.S. and 155 countries. In Australia, the scholarships are funded by the Australian and U.S. Governments and corporate partners and administered by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission in Canberra. Damien is one of 26 talented Australians to be recognised as a Fulbright Scholar in 2011.

Carly Rosewarne Professional Scholars

“Technologies to mitigate methane emissions from anthropogenic sources have the potential to significantly reduce the rate of climate change.”

Carly Rosewarne is a Research Scientist from CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences and the Sustainable Agriculture Flagship. Her research is focused on reducing methane emissions from livestock. She will study at the United States Government Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in California during 2015. Her project will focus on using sequencing technologies to study the genetics of methane producing microbes, commonly known as methanogens.

“Technologies to mitigate methane emissions from anthropogenic sources have the potential to significantly reduce the rate of climate change. Methane production is also under increasing scrutiny for use as an alternative energy source. My scholarship contributes to this field by allowing me to analyse genomes of methanogens that are underrepresented in current studies. By understanding how methanogens are able to survive and proliferate, we can develop targeted strategies to control their growth.”

Sue Baker Postdoctoral Scholars

“Development of ecologically sustainable forestry practices is essential to achieving a balance between environmental, social and economic values.”

Dr Sue Baker, a research fellow at the University of Tasmania, has won a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship to spend three and a half months working with the University of Washington and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. Through her Fulbright, Sue will evaluate the benefits of retention forestry practices for biodiversity conservation.

The practice of leaving unlogged patches within coupes (retention forestry) is increasingly used globally to balance environmental, social and economic values. Although new in Australia, these practices were developed twenty years ago in western USA.

Sue’s project will critically assess the role of retained patches in facilitating re-establishment of mature-forest biodiversity in logged areas.

“The retention forestry approach was developed in Western North America based on insights into species recovery following the massive volcanic eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980. Contrary to traditional theory emphasising immigration of organisms from outside of the affected landscape, diverse refuges within the blast area allowed some organisms to survive volcanic impacts,” Sue said.

“Through my research in the U.S., I will test the hypotheses that re-establishment of harvested areas by mature-forest affiliated plants and invertebrates will be greater adjacent to intact edges than small isolated aggregates, and will be more pronounced at the older sites. Biodiversity responses should manifest as differences in both relative abundance and the distance into harvested areas that species extend.”

By applying the same methodology for sampling beetles and plants in USA as in Australia, Susan will extend investigation of biodiversity effects through a much longer time series than possible for local studies. The project will increase ecological-sustainability of forest harvesting practices.

Sue has a BSc (Hons 1) and a PhD from the University of Tasmania. She also has a Bachelor of Forest Science, University of Melbourne and Spanish Certificate Level III, from TAFE Tasmania. She has won awards including Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship Industry and a Gottstein Trust Fellowship at the World Forest Institute, Portland, Oregon. In her spare time she enjoys hiking, diving and learning about the natural history and culture of places she visits.

Stephanie Reuter Lange Postdoctoral Scholars

“The development of pharmaceutical products is, by large, expensive, time‐consuming and inefficient with the clinical use of medications seldom optimal. The emerging science of pharmacometrics offers the opportunity to improve the process and address these issues.”

Dr Stephanie Reuter Lange is a postdoctoral researcher in medical sciences at the University of South Australia. She is one of two winners of the 2012 Fulbright South Australia Scholarship, sponsored by the South Australian Government and the universities in South Australia.

Through her Fulbright, she will spend four months at the State University of New York, University at Buffalo undertaking workshops and research in computational modelling (pharmacometrics).

“Pharmacometrics offers the ability to use mathematical and statistical models to fully exploit data generated during the drug development program and from clinical practice in order to streamline, facilitate and optimise the development and use of pharmaceutical products,” Stephanie said.

“The knowledge acquired as part of this scholarship will be used to facilitate drug development and the translation of health discoveries into clinical practice, in keeping with health research priorities of Australia and the U.S.”

Stephanie will focus on improving the treatment of malaria and carnitine deficiency.

In relation to malaria, the project will determine the factors that contribute to the action of antimalarial medications from which more effective strategies for the treatment of malaria can be established, ultimately resulting in improved clinical outcomes, particularly in vulnerable patient groups.

Carnitine is a naturally occurring substance that the body needs for healthy functioning of fat metabolism. Patients with kidney disease who are on dialysis often lack this essential compound. The project will combine Stephanie’s knowledge in the field of carnitine deficiency with expertise in disease progression modelling from researchers at the University at Buffalo in order to better understand the medical use of carnitine. These findings may then be extrapolated to provide information on the development and treatment of other forms of carnitine deficiency as well as the use of naturally occurring compounds in medicine.

Stephanie has a BSc from The University of Adelaide and a PhD in medical sciences from the University of South Australia. Stephanie is an executive committee member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association and a scientific reviewer for Bellberry Human Research Ethics Committee. She has twice received the APSA Annual Conference Award and has published widely. In her spare time she enjoys travel, golf and photography.

Rachelle Peta Cole Postgraduate Students

Rachelle is a language teacher, community leader and commentator who works on educational disadvantage, second language learning and Australia’s relationship with Asia. She is currently the Head of Languages at Glenroy College in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, having recently completed Teach for Australia, a program that attracts high achieving graduates into the teaching profession to teach at disadvantaged schools. In addition to teaching, Rachelle has taken on leadership positions in a number of community organizations. She is an Advisor to the Language Barrier, a not-for-profit organisation promoting second language learning through web stories, and the co-founder of the Australia Indonesia Youth Association, an organization to help build links between young people from Australia and Indonesia (AIYA). Under her stewardship AIYA grew to become the leading organization for youth links between both countries, with representation in eleven cities across Australia and Indonesia. In addition to teaching and her community activities, Rachelle also regularly writes about education policy and Australian youth engagement with Indonesia, a country in which she has lived for several years. She has degrees in International Relations and Asian Studies with first class honors from the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, as well as a Graduate Diploma of Teaching (Secondary) from the University of Melbourne.

During the term of her Fulbright Scholarship, Rachelle is planning on studying a Masters of Arts (Education) at a leading education school in the US. She plans on studying with scholars who work on language teaching, both English as an additional language and second languages. During the term of her Fulbright, Rachelle plans to focus on the role that technology and innovative teaching methods can play in improving engagement and proficiency in second language learning, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. She will return to Australia following her scholarship year and utilize her skills in a leading teaching position with the long-term objective of advising government on language and education policy.

Amanda Franklin Postgraduate Students

“Throughout the animal kingdom, there are many fascinating and intriguing animal behaviours. The most enthralling are those behaviours involved in sexual reproduction.”

Ms Amanda Franklin, a recent Masters graduate in science from the University of Melbourne, has been awarded one of the coveted International Fulbright Science and Technology Awards. These accolades are the most prestigious and valuable awards offered by the U.S. Government. The IS&T Awards cover full tuition, stipend and living expenses for three years to undertake a PhD in the U.S. They are offered to only about 40 people worldwide.

Through her Fulbright Amanda will undertake a PhD in animal behavior, in particular communication and reproductive behaviors in mantis shrimp.

“Visual displays during courtship and male-male competition are common and can include elaborate courtship displays by male birds of paradise to aggressive, intimidating displays by frill-necked lizards. The individuals performing these behaviours do so in an attempt to maximise their fecundity and pass on their genes to the next generation,” Amanda said.

“My ideal career would be to become a successful animal behaviour researcher. After completing a PhD, I would like to begin a Post Doctorate. I am very interested in the evolution of mating strategies and how this can relate to endangered species survival and also to sustainable fishing practices.”.

She said that mantis shrimp are ideal for her study because they have the most complex visual system in the animal kingdom. During courtship and aggressive displays, they appear to flash colored patches on their bodies to one another. However, even though mantis shrimp have such incredible eyesight, there is surprisingly little research into these interactions and the role of visual signals.

Amanda has MSc in Animal Behaviour from The University of Melbourne and a BSc in Zoology/Marine Biology from the University of Melbourne. She has won awards and prizes including a National Master of Science Scholarship and student awards from the Victorian Marine Science Consortium and Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour. She also has a Certificate III in Tourism Guiding from the William Angliss Institute of TAFE. She was a presenter on a community radio station’s (3CR) marine radio program, “Out of the Blue” and has been a volunteer with the Harnas Wildlife Foundation volunteer program in Namibia, Africa. In her spare time she enjoys snorkelling, travelling, photography and learning French.

Monique Hurley Postgraduate Students

Monique holds a Bachelor of Laws (First class honours) and Bachelor of Arts (Politics) from Monash University.  During her university studies, Monique interned at the Parliament of Victoria, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law and Justice Connect (formerly the Public Interest Law Clearing House). Monique went on complete her Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice with the College of Law and was admitted to practice in December 2012.  She worked for two years as a lawyer at Clayton Utz, working across the firm’s corporate, litigation and administrative law practices.  She went on to spend one year working as an Associate to the Honourable Justice Sloss at the Supreme Court of Victoria.  Monique has volunteered as a lawyer with the Homeless Person’s Legal Clinic, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Mental Health Legal Centre and Prahran Citizen’s Advice Bureau.  She has also co-authored a report on the methodology used by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to assess the age of minors in immigration detention, which was published by leading civil liberties organization, Liberty Victoria, in September 2015.  Monique currently works as a solicitor for the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency in Katherine where she travels to remote communities to provide civil law advice and representation to Aboriginal clients.  Monique advises clients on a diverse range of areas, including employment and discrimination matters, the applicability of statutory compensation schemes, complaints against the police and health care complaints.  She also represents clients in adult guardianship, child protection and alcohol mandatory treatment proceedings.  Outside of work, Monique is an avid supporter of the Geelong Football Club and enjoys traveling, reading and spending time with family and friends.

For her Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship, Monique hopes to study a Masters of Law (LLM) in America. She would like to build on her previous studies and practical legal experience by focusing her overseas LLM studies on international and human rights law.  Monique would like to learn from the American and international experience at a leading university to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how the law can be used as a mechanism to help empower disadvantaged individuals and groups of people.

Jessa Thurman Postgraduate Students

Jessa will study the use of the Anastatus wasp as a biological control agent for pests in Macadamia farms near Brisbane, Australia. This research project will include a new species description of the wasp and a study of the ecology of both the raised and wild varieties of this wasp. Insights from this project will extend into  her research on the use of parasitoid wasps  and hopefully guide the development of new biological control agents. Jessa aspires to improve our usage of biological control agents to regulate pest populations in crops by understanding how these insects and other arthropods interact with pests and the environment. These studies may also be based on insights from land managers. This combination of research interests should improve overall execution of biological control on farms globally. These interests will be pursued throughout the completion of her PhD in Entomology and possibly furthered as a professor.

Israel Del Toro Postgraduate Students

“To better understand and predict the consequences of global environmental change on biodiversity, we must first understand the current state of natural communities and how community composition can change across broad geographic gradients, including latitude and elevation.”

Mr Israel Del Toro, a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is this year’s winner of the CSIRO sponsored Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship. Through his Fulbright, Israel will explore the role of ants as environmental indicators with the Climate Adaptation Flagship, in the Northern Territory.

“Global climate change threatens ecological communities by shifting species distributions and altering how species assemble into communities,” Israel said.

“This type of study is necessary for creatures which are key functional members of terrestrial ecosystems and account for much of the diversity on the planet.”

Israel will study how assemblages of ants vary along environmental gradients in the seasonal tropics of Northern Australia, and how dominant and abundant species may respond to climate change. He said that ants are excellent model organisms because their species diversity is high and generally well understood, they are sensitive to environmental stressors, and are widely used as indicators of environmental change.

“My research will improve the current predictive capacity about how assemblages of important species in ecosystems will respond to climate change. It is important to understand the effects of climate change on community assembly and species distributions at continental scales and so this line of research is likely to enhance bilateral collaborations between the U.S. and Australian research institutions.”

Israel has a BS in biology and environmental science from the University of Texas, El Paso. He has won prizes and awards including a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a NEAGEP Doctoral Student Fellowship, and a National Geographic Society Young Explorer’s Grant. In his spare time he takes part in University Clubs and plays softball for a local team “the Unnatural Selection”.