Emma Hultin

IGC FELLOW    |   Global Change Center

Ph.D. Student  •  Fish and Wildlife Conservation

Advisors : Dr. Holly Kindsvater and Dr. Leandro Castello

Research Interests: Freshwater ecosystems, population dynamics modeling

emmah6@vt.edu  •  Twitter

Emma is a PhD student in the department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation where she works to apply novel statistical methods to fisheries management. She received her BS in Biology at Virginia Tech in 2019, but was drawn back to Blacksburg to complete her MS in Freshwater Fish Conservation. During this time Emma began connecting her love of the natural world with her passion for science communication by exploring the applications of statistical modeling to our world’s complex problems. When she’s not conducting fisheries research, Emma’s work experience includes a variety of youth education programs primarily focused on connecting kids to their environment. She is a strong advocate for the use of art to promote engagement with science and nature and aims to incorporate these themes in her work whenever possible.

Emma’s current research takes a socio-ecological systems approach to modeling fish populations. Her work is centered on the economically and culturally valuable Arapaima (Arapaima gigas) found in the Brazilian Amazon. She will use integrated modeling techniques to connect human perspectives and actions to more traditional fisheries population models. She hopes that the IGC program will help her build a network of collaborators and support in developing the skills to conduct interdisciplinary and applied research in the future.