AARES Federal Webinar: From Good Ideas to Funded Grants: How to Prepare Proposals Reviewers Actually Want to Fund

Professor David Pannell 

David is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia; Ex-Director, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy; ARC Federation Fellow (2007-2012); Distinguished Fellow and Past President of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES); Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA); Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia; and a Director of Natural Decisions Pty Ltd. He was a Director on the Board of Land and Water Australia 2002-05. His research includes the Economics of Land and Water Conservation; Environmental Policy; Farmer Adoption of New Practices; Risk; and Economics of Farming Systems. His research has been published in five books, 220 journal articles and 40 book chapters, and has been recognised with awards from the USA, Australia, Canada and the UK. David’s priority in research is to deliver results that are of practical use.

Professor Sarah Wheeler 

Sarah is a Matthew Flinders Professor of Water Economics and leads the Water, Environment and Food Economics Policy Group (WEF Group) in the College of Business, Government and Law at Flinders University. Sarah is a past President and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES), and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She was an ARC Future Fellow (2014-2018) and has over 150 peer-reviewed outputs in the research areas of Irrigated Farming, Climate Change, Murray-Darling Basin, Organic Farming, Water Markets, Water Scarcity, Mental Health, and Food Waste.  Sarah is currently in the Australian Research Council College of Experts.

She has been a past Editor with Agricultural Economics, Australasian Journal of Water Resources, Water Resources and Economics, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Agricultural Water Management. Sarah is on several editorial boards, including International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Water. In 2023, Sarah was awarded the Jill Hudson Award for Environmental Protection at the SA Environment Awards, and the Distinguished Public Policy Fellow award by the Economic Society of Australia in 2024. 

Sarah was born on an irrigated dairy farm in NSW and grew up on a dryland mixed farm at the top of the Great Dividing Range in the New England region. She has worked as an Economist both nationally and internationally, for organisations such as Rural Solutions South Australia, ESCAP United Nations (Bangkok), Environment Agency (UK) and the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies. 

Professor Oscar Cacho 

Oscar is Emeritus Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of New England (UNE). He  started his professional life as a marine biologist and later branched into economics. His research interests centre on the application of economics and biology (bioeconomics) to tackle problems of sustainability concerning agriculture and natural resources. His recent work has been in three major areas: (1) the role of carbon markets to address climate change; (2) the economics of biosecurity to protect native ecosystems; and (3) modelling and management of agricultural systems for sustainable production. 

Oscar has been a member of a Technical Advisory Group on Control of Invasive Species in the Galapagos Islands and a visiting expert at the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. He has applied his interdisciplinary expertise to address a variety of problems in nature conservation, fisheries, aquaculture, grazing systems, invasive species management, climate policy and sustainable agriculture both in Australia and internationally. Oscar was awarded AARES Distinguished Fellow in 2016.