Laura's research has the overall goal of identifying pathways to balance human resource use with the conservation of biodiversity. To do this, she develops approaches grounded in spatial statistics, spatial ecology, and conservation decision science.

Over the past eight years, she has worked with NGOs in various local communities in Canada, Bolivia, South Africa, Guinea, and Mexico. She also started a campaign to regenerate degraded farmland via planting trees, to date, her initiative has planted over 100,000 trees (400trees.org).

For her PhD at Humboldt University (Berlin), Laura explored the relationship between food and fauna. She will continue on a similar vein with the LEAP project, where she will investigate the environmental effects of animal-sourced food (notably meat and dairy) in global diets.