Dr. Donna Marie Bilkovic is an ecologist and research assistant professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William & Mary. She has broad interests in the ecology of estuarine and coastal shallow water environments and habitat use of coastal fishes. A central goal of her research is to support the development of restoration/conservation strategies and decision-tools for coastal ecosystems. She began her scientific career at the University of Michigan evaluating whether predation pressure or food limitation contributed to varying size distributions of an invasive zooplankton species among Great Lakes. After moving to warmer climates, she assessed spawning and nursery habitat suitability of the anadromous fish, American shad, in Virginia. Much of her recent research has been aimed at investigating the effect of multiple coastal stressors, such as land use, shoreline and climate change on nearshore fish and benthic communities and their habitats. During the past several years, she has developed and applied integrative indices for measures of fish community integrity in the estuarine nearshore and quantified ecological thresholds of shoreline and riparian development. Throughout her career, she has pursued the development and use of geospatial tools such as GIS and spatial analysis to evaluate and model living marine resources and their associated habitats with management applications. This includes the application of spatially-explicit approaches to identify, evaluate, and quantify habitat suitability for estuarine fauna. She has contributed extensively to the assessment of the potential effect of water withdrawal projects on the early life stages of anadromous fishes, including the proposed King William Reservoir on the Mattaponi River in Virginia. She is a participant in the James River Atlantic Sturgeon Planning Group (made up of academia, federal & state agencies and non-profits) to restore sturgeon to the river. She also co-manages a derelict trap removal program that strives to link research, management and commercial interests (watermen) to address marine debris in Virginia. Dr. Bilkovic holds a Master of Science in biology from the University of Michigan and a Doctorate in marine ecology from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.