The 23-year-old has almost completed the first year of her PhD studies, which involve applying machine learning techniques to palaeoecology from fossils. 

Ms Brown said she was hoping to use advances in technology to shed more light on plant characteristics.

“We have this assumption that plants have always been found in the same environment, and if we found them as a fossil, they would have been living in the same environment back then as we are in now,” she said.

“More and more evidence from fossil records is suggesting this was maybe not the case.

“When you are looking at species with very narrow tolerances, there are records which indicate they used to live in a much broader range of climatic tolerances.

“Maybe they are not just limited to the top of a mountain in Tasmania, maybe that’s just where they have ended up.”

Originally from Launceston, Ms Brown graduated University of Tasmania last year with a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours.

She spent time as a bushwalking guide in Tasmania and the Northern Territory before moving to Hobart for her studies. The plant enthusiast said her PhD reflected a natural progression.

“As a bushwalking guide living in that kind of environment, it’s difficult not to take notice,” she said.

“I was already sharing a lot of knowledge about plants.”

In February, Ms Brown was named as one of 17 recipients of the $120,000 Westpac Future Leaders Scholarship.