Environment and Geography
- Environment and Geography
- Postgraduate study
- ECORISC NERC CDT
- Cohort 3 profiles
Cohort three - 2023
Francesca Mason
After completing my undergraduate degree in Bioveterinary Science at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London in 2015, I spent the past four years working as a Research Assistant and Outreach Coordinator at an elasmobranch field research station in the Bahamas. Here I assisted with a variety of projects looking to understand the ecology, behaviour and spatial ecology of shark populations in the region.
In 2021, I returned to university academia to undertake an MRes project at Cardiff University, looking to understand the parasitic infracommunties of Scyliorhinus canicula and assess their potential as bioindicators of pollutants. Upon completion of my MRes, I worked as a postgraduate research assistant based at the Institute of Zoology, ZSL for Project SIARC (SharksInspiring Action and Research with Communities) in Wales. Here my role looked to assist with data analysis work packages using fisheries data collected from current, historical, and fisher-integrated research efforts to address critical knowledge gaps in the ecology of a critically endangered angelshark (Squatina squatina).
My main research interests look to understand ecotoxicology of elasmobranchs, their parasites and surrounding marine environments.
PhD Project: Sentinel Sharks: Tracking anthropogenic contamination in marine ecosystems.
My project seeks to understand the current level of emerging pollutant contamination in trophic predators in UK waters and assess the potential for establishing shark parasites as bioindicators for heavy metal contamination across Wales, specifically focusing on the Bristol Channel. As an interdisciplinary project this work involves collaborating with a number of different institutions including my partner organisation Cefas. I hope to use this research to aid in establishing a universal biomonitoring system and to help with focusing mitigation strategies.
Joseph D'Souza
During my BSc in Biological Sciences at Cardiff University, I became interested in freshwaters and the impacts of pollutants within these environments. For my final year project, I investigated the fate of microplastics within dippers (Cinclus cinclus) and published some of the first evidence of food web transfer of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems. I've since worked as a terrestrial ecologist for a large-scale consultancy undertaking ecological surveys and impact assessments for nationally significant infrastructure projects. Outside of work I enjoy exploring the many walks in South Wales, cooking and spending too much time playing ultimate frisbee.
PhD Project: Effects of neuroactive chemicals on freshwater ecosystems.
Whilst we know neuroactive chemicals are pervasive in the environment, a major challenge to understand is their effects beyond those on individual organisms. This project will look to address two main questions: (1) how do neuroactive chemicals affect ecological interactions (e.g., predation and competition) and the networks they form; and (2) do changes to ecological networks result in alterations in ecosystem function? We'll be looking to combine both empirical and in silico approaches to generate some of the first policy-relevant data and knowledge on the effects and risks of neuroactive chemicals on freshwater ecosystems.
Laura Penny
I studied my undergraduate in Zoology at the University of Glasgow. I completed my Masters by Research in Entomology at the University of Reading in 2021. This led me to work as a research technician at the University of Aberdeen, working on the “Arrive and Survive” project, which is investigating whether evolutionary change is consistent across parallel range shifts in the Blue-tailed Damselfly. During this time, I was part of a research team who travelled to Norway and Finland to collect damselfly samples. From these samples we obtained genetic data to investigate how population genetics change at the range limit, and what factors could be driving this change.
My interests lie in insect ecology and behaviour, and in ecosystem functioning. I am especially interested in the roles of ecosystem service provider species within ecosystems, and how anthropogenic driven factors such as pollution and agricultural intensification are affecting ecosystem functioning. These interests led me to apply for my PhD project with ECORISC.
PhD Project: Call of nature: How do livestock veterinary drugs impact dung beetles and other macroinvertebrates, their microbiota and associated ecosystem services?
Dung beetles are important ecosystem service providers, involved in the decomposition of dung and nutrient cycling. Many studies have shown that avermectins (anti-helminthic veterinary medicines) can negatively affect dung beetles in a variety of ways. Antibiotics are another commonly used drug in agriculture, which may frequently be present in dung at the same time as avermectins. However, there is limited information on how antibiotics, or a combination of antibiotics and avermectins, may affect dung beetles, and thus the essential ecosystem services they provide.
My project is based at the University of Exeter, Penryn Campus. I will be investigating the independent and combinational effects of antibiotics and avermectins on beetle behaviour, reproductive success and survival. I will also be establishing whether these medicines have an effect on the microbiome of dung beetles, and earthworms – another key decomposer. I will then model how these effects may impact ecosystem service provision. I hope our findings may lead to more sustainable use of veterinary medicine within the agriculture industry.
Chung Laam (Tiffany) Tsui
I am from Hong Kong, and I moved to the UK to study MSci in Zoology, I graduated in 2022 from the University of Exeter (Penryn Campus). I have done my research projects on various subjects, ranging from evolutionary biology to molecular ecology. I am fascinated by the defence mechanisms of different animals against diseases and chemicals. Therefore, I studied the systematic variation in skin microbiome between infected and non-infected palmate newts with a fungus-like disease for my foruth-year research project. I have now started my PhD studying the defence mechanism of bees against insecticides.
PhD Project: Leveraging genomics and artificial intelligence to develop predictive pesticide risk assessment frameworks for wild bees.
Bees are among the world’s most environmentally and economically important group of insects, pollinating a remarkable diversity of flowering plants and playing a key role in the production of a wide range of food and commodity crops. However, while carrying out this ecosystem service, bees can be exposed to a variety of potentially harmful toxins such as pesticides used in agriculture. Current bee pollinator pesticide risk assessment relies on experimental data collected for a handful of ‘model’ managed bee species such as the western honeybee and the buff-tailed bumblebees. However, bees are a highly diverse group of insects comprising more than 20,000 known species.
My PhD project will be based at the University of Exeter (Penryn Campus), working in partnership with Bayer CropScience. This project aims to create a framework that uses bioinformatics to locate the candidate detoxification gene (cytochrome P450s) in wild bees in order to develop new tools and predictive pipelines for bee pesticide risk assessment.
Lucy Hart
I completed my undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, where my research project focused on evaluating and optimising a zeolite structure for the purposes of carbon capture using experiment and modelling approaches. I was lucky to spend most of my weekends in the Scottish Highlands with the mountaineering club and became interested in exploring how I could use chemistry knowledge/skills in environmental protection.
PhD Project: Understanding the atmospheric transport and fate of fluorinated Persistent Organic Pollutants with global models.
The overarching aim of the project is to provide new insight into the atmospheric production and long-range transport of persistent pollutants, with a focus on short-chain perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) – toxic chemicals that are of increasing global environmental concern. The project will evaluate the potential environmental impacts of new ultra-low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants, an emerging source of PFCAs whose emissions are increasing, using a multi-model approach. This will enable uncertainty on estimates of pollutant deposition to remote regions (e.g. the Arctic) to be better quantified.
Matthew Cato
I am a passionate early career marine biologist with a strong interest in how chemical pollutants are affecting our marine environments. I graduated from the University of York in 2021 with a BSc in Environment, Economics and Ecology. Since graduating, I raised up the funds to be able to travel the world and take part in meaningful projects that aimed to protect and enhance marine ecosystems and the life that lives within them.
My 20 months of travelling included sea turtle conservation in Sri Lanka, coral reef and fish surveys in Thailand and the Philippines, artificial reef building and management in Indonesia, various beach cleaning events on the east coast of Australia, and most recently interning with the Manta Trust in the Maldives. These experiences have helped me to not only develop skills required for a PhD, but also allowed me to see first-hand how the underwater world is being affected by humanity. From coral bleaching to the vast amount of waste I’ve come across in the ocean and on beaches. It is through my PhD project that I hope to uncover one of the many ways our seas are being impacted by these anthropogenic influences.
PhD Project: Can antibiotics disrupt biogeochemical nitrogen cycling in the coastal ocean?
Marine environments are under growing pressure from antibiotics, sourced from wastewater treatment plants or aquaculture farms, for example. Antibiotics can inhibit the role that microorganisms play in catalysing essential processes in the marine nitrogen cycle such as nitrogen fixation or nitrification. Alongside organisation partner, Cefas, I hope to gain a firm understanding of how antibiotics impact these ecosystem functions for effective regulation of pollutants and protection of marine ecosystem health and water quality.
Safia El-Amiri
I’m Safia, originally from North London. I completed my BSc in Physical Geography at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). My undergraduate dissertation focused on creating an ecosystem service assessment framework to quantify the ecosystem services provided by three different tree planting scenarios for a wild swimming park in East London called the ‘East London Waterworks Park’. It is a community-driven urban rewilding project aimed at reintroducing green and blue space to an old Thames Water depot that runs adjacent to the River Lea. I completed my MSc in Water and Environmental Management in September 2023 at QMUL which was funded by two awards, a Worshipful Company of Water Conservators scholarship and a JBAtrust-Environment Agency- British Hydrological Society studentship. My MSc dissertation focused on earthworm facilitated microplastic transport through soil, with a particular focus on agricultural plastics. In my spare time I enjoy painting and getting outdoors.
PhD Project: Evaluating the health of treescapes in polluted urban environments.
My primary and co-supervisors are based at the University of Sheffield, the University of York and Syngenta. The project aims to better understand how various anthropogenic stressors such as pollution exposure and drought, impact tree growth and health at a number of different spatial scales, and how subsequently invertebrate communities that rely on street trees are impacted. The project makes use of the urban tree observatory (UTO) a network of instrumented trees, made up of four different species, within the city of Sheffield measuring four different variables such as sap flow and air temperature. Metabolomics will also be used to explore how anthropogenic stressors induce biochemical changes within plants.
Dylan Asbury (Affiliated Student)
Growing up near Birmingham in the UK, I have always had a fascination with the living planet, fostered by my parents and grandfather. I graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2020 with a BSc in Zoology. Following this, I went on to complete an MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College London’s Silwood Park campus. My master's thesis investigated how two common pesticides impact parasitisation of the buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris by common intestinal parasites. My research interests lie in understanding the drivers of biodiversity decline and formulating novel solutions to mitigate said declines.
PhD Project: The Impacts of Mixtures of Chemicals on Mixtures of Freshwater Species in a Changing World.
Based within the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield in conjunction with the University of York and our industry partner Unilever; this project aims to develop new approaches for predicting the acute and sublethal food-web mediated effects of chemical mixtures on freshwater communities. The utility of the new modelling approach will be illustrated by exploring how the effects of chemical mixtures varies spatially across a range of representative English river catchments under current conditions and also in the future under climate change.
Laura Sophia Landon Blake
I moved from Germany to the UK to do my Masters in Zoology. Starting my degree, I imagined myself camping out in hides while studying mammalian behaviour. Much to my surprise, the areas of research that most captivated me were computational and theoretical ecology. I am particularly interested in the effects that multiple stressors have on food webs and ecosystem function. How multiple stressors interact and how the structure of the affected food web determines its resilience to perturbation is not only an incredibly interesting area of research to me but can also merge theoretical with applied ecology and thus inform ecological management practices. When I am not working on my research, I usually have my hands full with my one-year-old daughter or (if time permits) my latest creative hobby – ranging from sewing to refurbishing.
PhD Project: Towards a unified understanding of species invasiveness along chemical stress gradients.
Global change stressors, including warming, habitat fragmentation, and invasive species, among many others, pose a significant threat to biodiversity. They can manifest as both continuous, long-term pressures (press perturbations) and sudden, discrete events (pulse perturbations). They can cause additive, antagonistic or synergistic effects and act at several ecological scales, ranging from physiology to ecosystem function. Importantly, not only are these stressors on the rise, they are also expected to increase in the future.
Furthermore, how the affected communities respond to disturbance is influenced by both biotic and abiotic factors, such as the stressor in question, the abundance of invasive species or the properties of the recipient community (eg, species richness, connectance etc.).
Chemical contaminants and the introduction of invasive species rank among the most damaging threats to global ecosystems. However, our understanding of when and how they are most likely to have a severe impact, let alone the consequences of their combined effects, remains incomplete. Both invasive species and contaminants have far-reaching consequences however, ranging from species losses and extinctions to loss of ecosystem function, ultimately impacting human health and well-being.
Due to their heterogenous and multidirectional nature, it is difficult to make accurate predictions about their effects on ecosystems. However, both invasions and contaminants alter species interactions (eg, introducing new species to the community and affecting metabolic processes). Consequently, they can be investigated by modelling the biomass dynamics of the recipient food webs.
To disentangle the mechanisms mediating stressor impacts and facilitate the development of testable predictions, my research project aims to assess the combined effects of invasive species and chemical stressors by simulating their impact on complex multi-species food webs.
Eleanor Phillips
I completed my Integrated Masters degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Sheffield before spending a year working as a research technician in Sheffield’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology research cluster. My work centred around how the ageing process is influenced by different environmental factors such as micronutrient availability, using drosophila as a model organism. I am now continuing my time at Sheffield starting the ECORISC PhD.
PhD Project: A geometric framework approach to understand multi-metal toxicity on individual organisms to evaluate relative risks and benefits of pollution and mitigation.
My project aims to understand the physiological impact of multi-metal toxicity by conducting a comprehensive assessment of the effects of combinations of numerous organic metals, and mapping these effects using a geometric framework. I hope to first study these effects in drosophila, as a high throughput model, before expanding these findings to other species at UKCEH. Through this project, I hope to provide a clearer understanding of the impacts of complex combinations of metal mixtures found in the environment.
Harry Bond-Taylor
I completed my undergraduate degree in BSc Biology, gaining a first class, in 2022 at Sheffield Hallam University. Covering topics such as heavy metal impact on developing antibiotic resistant genes in microbes and public perception of multiple pollution sources allowed me to develop my interest and understanding in anthropogenic contaminants and their associated ecological impact.
After my undergraduate degree I remained at Sheffield Hallam University to complete a secondary science PGCE. I enjoyed this experience, and this allowed me to understand the importance of public scientific outreach which I will ensure to incorporate throughout my time in research.
PhD Project: Chemical-climate interactions: impacts on marine fish communities.
Marine biodiversity is in decline as a result of multiple major threats including climate change, pollution and overexploitation. This project will consider the interactions between climate change and chemical pollution on marine fish, particularly within the North Sea. Marine fish are exposed to a wide variety of chemical pollutants, which can accumulate throughout the marine food web. Climate change alters the movement of fish communities and so this project will track how the chemical risk changes as fish species distributions track our changing climate. A focus will be placed on exploring of climate induced changes on the vulnerability of marine fish communities to anthropogenic pollutants for the wider marine food web, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services.
Jacob Parkman
I'm from Weston-super-Mare, a town near Bristol. In 2017, I began my foundation degree at the University of Plymouth after some less than successful A-Levels and I subsequently completed a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science. Following this, I began to apply for jobs but the pandemic made this difficult. Instead, I volunteered with a variety of wildlife trusts and conservation practitioners including the wetland bird survey (WeBS). I also undertook as much training as I could on topics such as bird ID and sustainable forestry practices. I decided to apply for an MSc at Exeter in Biodiversity and Conservation which allowed me to up my knowledge and gain significant fieldwork experience studying the relationship between phenological mismatch and elevation at the CNRS in Moulis, France.
PhD Project: Eggshell thinning as a re-emerging risk to bird populations: the potential role of chemical pollution.
I am studying for my PhD with the ECORISC CDT through the University of Sheffield and in partnership with the BTO and RSPB. Eggshell thinning has historically been a significant driver of decline in birds, especially raptors, but following the ban of DDT eggshell thickness has improved and populations have recovered. However, there is some evidence that eggshell thinning is returning, and so the initial objective of my PhD project is to identify species that are being affected and then identify possible contaminants that could be the cause.
Isla Stubbs
I completed my BSc in Environmental Science at the University of York. During this time, I also undertook a valuable placement year at Labcorp Drug Development in Cambridge where I worked as an assistant scientist in the Terrestrial Ecotoxicology department. I worked with a variety of plants and bugs, including worms, ladybirds, bumble bees and honey bees (I even got some experience of beekeeping at the on-site apiary!). In my spare time I love to read and embroider, as well as going bouldering at the local climbing centre.
PhD Project: Pharmaceutical pollution in agriculture: Impacts & risks for soil health and crop production.
My PhD project will investigate the pervasive issue of pharmaceutical pollution in agriculture, with a primary focus on understanding its multifaceted impacts and associated risks to both soil health and crop production. As I begin my project, I hope to shed light on the extent of pharmaceutical contamination in agricultural ecosystems, examining its effects on soil quality, nutrient cycling, and overall ecosystem resilience.
Skye Stephenson
In 2022, I achieved a BSc in Forensic and Analytical Science at the University of Huddersfield with my thesis focusing on entomotoxicology, investigating the effect of lead on the growth and development of the Lucilia Sericata fly species. After completing my BSc, I began my career as an assistant scientist where I utilised analytical methods to determine the presence of metals in environmental samples, alongside pursuing an MSc in Forensic Biology. During my studies and whilst gaining experience in the field, I identified my passion for toxicology paired with a desire to help to reduce the impact that we are having on our planet. This ultimately led me to the ECORISC CDT programme where I will be pursuing my PhD in ecotoxicology at the University of York and UKCEH whilst also having the pleasure of working alongside Syngenta. In my spare time, I enjoy going to the gym, gaming, and camping.
PhD Project: Optimising high throughput mechanistic ecotoxicology for assessing comparative toxicity across species and chemicals?
My PhD project will investigate the effects of different chemicals across a number of species in a hope to develop a system to predict these effects. I will look at how these effects play out over time and the differences that are encountered across different species.
Marianne Lotter-Jones
I'm a PhD student with Professor Colin Brown at the University of York. I went to Swarthmore College in the U.S. for my undergraduate degree, where I studied many things, but eventually majored in biology and minored in environmental studies. It was there where I developed my understanding and passion for the intersectionalities between all subjects. I believe that in a world so complex it does not make sense to study anything in complete isolation.
After graduating, I worked as a campaigns and events officer with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust where I was able to see how science informed local policy and action. I soon discovered that I wanted to be on the other side of the action, I wanted to be doing the research. So back off to university I went; to the University of Sheffield where I completed a Masters by Research in Plant and Microbial Biology. And now, I’m about to do a PhD in landscape design at the University of York. I love keeping an open mind about the world around me, exploring nature in all its glory. I’ve certainly travelled far and wide to study different fields of biology. I’m excited for how I can incorporate my background into this PhD and how it will bring together science, policy, and action. When I’m not doing science, I like to go paddle-boarding on the water or hike up a mountain.
PhD Project: Towards design of chemical resilient agricultural landscapes.
The UK has some of the lowest levels of biodiversity in Europe; species have declined by 13% since the 1970s, and 15% of UK species are at risk of extinction. As agricultural landscapes make up 71% of UK land use, they are a key starting point for improved land management. My research will centre around modelling alternative futures for agricultural landscapes to meet demands for national food security whilst also enhancing biodiversity.