Michelle Balasso

Michelle Balasso

Consultant - Forestry

Michelle has already accumulated exceptionally broad and in-depth experience in several facets of the forestry and wood technologies sectors. In the last years she specialised in identifying the environmental and biological factors influencing wood properties and the characteristics of the resulting commercial end-products.

Clearly committed to advancing the forest industry through scientific rigour, Michelle already holds a Bachelor of Science (Forest and Environmental Technologies) and an international Master of Science (Forest Science) and broad experience in her native Europe.

As she joins Esk, Michelle is completing her PhD candidacy at UTAS/ARC Centre for Forest Value. She has spent the last 4 years researching in the Australian forestry and timber sector, engaging with management executives, coordinating research projects and communicating findings, as well as successfully interacting with companies along the forestry value chain. She focused her project on the best uses of Eucalyptus plantations, investigating environmental effects on wood properties and how those are translated into structural timber characteristics. She developed systems to segregate trees at harvest and logs on the mill yard to stream the raw forest resource to the best processing facility to be used for the most appropriate products.

A natural and engaging communicator with extensive experience ranging from educational events to international conferences and workshops both for academics and professionals, multilingual (including English, Italian and Spanish), Michelle extends her knowledge and the Esk team to the forest industry internationally.