Judit Szabo is a conservation biologist and ornithologist. Her Masters degree was in Ecology and received a PhD in Ecotoxicology, studying the effects of pesticides on Australian birds. During her academic career she has studied optimal monitoring of birds, including threatened species. As a researcher at CDU, she contributed to the Red List assessment to determine the threat of extinction of all Australian bird species and subspecies and co-authored the Action Plan for Australian Birds. She worked outside academia for the conservation of migratory waterbirds and their habitats in the East Asian – Australasian Flyway, as well as on policy capacity building of non-governmental organisations in Africa and Asia. She is also fascinated with finding the best use of volunteer-collected datasets, particularly to unravel patterns and trends in bird distributions in Australia and Brazil. She has a keen interest in bird surveying and bird marking, and training the next generation of researchers to use effective, robust and ethical methods while in the field, analysing data or writing up their research.