Greater Newcastle Area
Tess is an experienced practitioner in surface water assessments and management plans, water balance assessments, water quality assessments, hydrologic and hydraulic modelling and environmental impact assessments.
Tess is a member of the Waterways and Coastal team at GHD Newcastle with experience in water infrastructure management as well as environmental monitoring and management. In particular, Tess has experience with water management in the mining and power generation industries including water balance modelling, water resource feasibility studies, water quality assessments, water management plans and environmental surface water impact assessments. She has experience utilising a number of software applications for drainage design, hydrologic and hydraulic modelling, water quality investigations and water balances.
As part of NCIG's Vacation Employment Program, Tess completed 12 weeks of work experience. During this time, she played an integral role in leading an investigation into corrosion and residue build-up in the on-site water reticulation system. Tess also gained experience with water and environmental management practices in an industrial setting. Specific tasks included regular water quality sampling and monitoring, environmental site inspections and contractor audits, collation and presentation of water, dust and energy consumption data, fauna monitoring, SCADA control system monitoring and data interrogation and the preparation of weekly and monthly environmental reports.
Tess undertook a supervised scientific research project in the Amphibian Research Laboratory within the Faculty of Science and Information Technology at the University of Newcastle. The research was part of a larger initiative into the immune function of native Australian frogs. The project included project design and management, literature reviews, laboratory-based experiments, statistical analysis and interpretation of data and written and oral presentation of the findings.
Tess worked as a summer vacation student at CSIRO Plant Industry on a project studying the genetic pathways of flowering in barley. She performed a wide range of plant molecular biology techniques including growing plants in the glasshouse, harvesting plant material, RNA extraction, cDNA synthesis, real-time PCR to measure gene expression and cloning and sequencing PCR products. Tess's roles in this project were to perform experiments to measure the effect of cold on gene expression; analyse and interpret data; and present the findings in group discussions, a symposium and in a written report.