Dr. Rachel Hickcox
Scientist Spotlight 2024
Dr. Rachel Hickcox is a spatial ecologist and conservation biologist specializing in marine movement tracking and species distribution modelling. For her PhD at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Rachel used animal-borne GPS and dive loggers to track endangered yellow-eyed penguins at sea to understand their marine distribution, habitat use, and overlap with prey, commercial fisheries, and marine protected areas. Her research uses spatial and GIS methods to quantify the threats facing penguins, with the overall aim of informing marine spatial planning and conservation management decisions. Rachel is now the research scientist for the Helps Pōhatu Conservation Trust where she manages the long-term monitoring and research programme at Pōhatu/Flea Bay, one of the largest little penguin colonies on mainland New Zealand. She also works as a spatial ecologist at Proteus, a statistical consulting company based in Dunedin, New Zealand. Before her studies on New Zealand penguins, Rachel was an African penguin intern at Mystic Aquarium. Her first fieldwork experience was on Bird Island, South Africa, where she assisted a PhD student on her study of African penguin foraging ecology. She completed her master’s degree at the University of Lincoln (UK) and her undergraduate at Worcester (wust-er) Polytechnic Institute (US).
