Fulton was born in 1973 on a farm near Goulburn, NSW, and expressed a keen interest in maths as well a curiosity about the natural environment. Fulton was awarded her BSc in Mathematics and Marine Biology from
James Cook University (1997), and her PhD from the
University of Tasmania in 2000. Her thesis was titled ‘The effects of the structure and formulation of ecosystem models on model performance’. Fulton started working at CSIRO in 2001, investigating indicators of the ecological effects of fishing. She developed the model Atlantis, and was appointed a research scientist in 2004. The Atlantis model was evaluated to be the 'world's best for evaluation of marine fisheries by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, and was utilised to provide advice on fisheries within the United States, Europe and Australia. She also worked on the model InVitro, which explores the impacts and managements of different pressures on coastal and marine environments. The models give equal weighting to both human and biophysical components within
marine ecosystems. Fulton has described the process of building complex models as follows: "We need to talk to the people who’ve spent their lives studying the different bits of the system – currents, climate, plankton, fish, sharks, whales, fisherman, local shop keepers, managers, the whole kit and kaboodle. We spend months getting the thing going and making sure it works like the real thing, we try to make it as accurate as possible." == Media ==