Dr Matthew Burnett is a Principal Scientist at the Institute of Natural Resources and Honorary Researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Dr Burnett started his career in the field of nature conservation and now focuses on researching freshwater ecosystems with over 19 years of experience. His vision is building capacity through education, bringing people to a deeper value of freshwater ecosystems and their services that maintain people’s livelihoods, and providing scientific evidence to improve how these important ecosystems and their integrity are sustained. His focus on functional diversity of freshwater fishes that provide ecosystem services to rural livelihoods is assisting with research towards the Water, Energy and Food Nexus. As part of his work, he is involved in several social and ecological fishery research projects evaluating the inland fisheries potential of rivers and impoundments with a focus on the conservation of iconic and threatened native fish species and the impact of non-native fish species in the region. This has included investigating ecotoxicology and antibiotic resistant bacteria in key fishery targeted fishes. In addition, he has worked on river connectivity and restoration projects while using fish telemetry techniques to monitor the efficacy of fishways on instream barriers, removing redundant instream structures, and restoring fish populations following severe fish kill events. He is considered an expert in the use of fish telemetry for inland freshwater and co-developed the Southern African Inland Fish Tracking Programme (FISHTRAC) to assist with water resource management and the conservation of fish in Africa. He has used technology to develop data collection and simulation of ecological datasets for dissemination to managers. This has included developing data processing and machine learning tools to interpret real-time data for managers. Part of his profile is developing and using environmental DNA (eDNA) to map biodiversity and detect alien invasive species in the river continuum.

Dr Burnett obtained his PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2019. He has a passion to build capacity through education and is co-supervising several students on PhD, MSc and Honours level. These include students across various disciplines, including engineering, computational sciences, and governance, while collaborating with institutions, and government and non-government organisations. He has established collaborators and published with established researchers from various international countries including Africa.