In 2002, she received a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of Queensland, where she studied humpback dolphins for her undergraduate research.
[2] She then pursued her graduate education in evolutionary biology at the University of New South Wales, where she joined the Shark Bay Dolphin Project, working to understand how social and genetic factors affect dolphins' ability to survive and reproduce.
[3] Frere became a research fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast where she began her program of training dogs to follow the scent trail of koala poop to track where koalas were living and patters of habitation.
[2] She and her research group tested a detection dog called Maya trained by professional dog trainer Gary Jackson to smell koala scat, demonstrating that this method was more efficient and accurate than other scat surveying methods.
[4] The method served as the basis for USC's Detection Dogs for Conservation, which she co-founded with colleague Romane Critescu.