Category Archives: 2016 speakers blog

Laura Crook is currently a research technician at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural institute in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. She is a weed ecologist studying herbicide resistance in black-grass, a major weed affecting yields in cereal crops in the UK. Here, Laura explains … Continue reading →

Rosie Johnson is a PhD student in space plasma physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester. The focus of her research is the infrared aurora of Jupiter. Here, Rosie tells us how she went from studying … Continue reading →

Dr Lydia Cole is an ecologist who got distracted by peat.  Generally interested in how people and the environment mesh, or not as the case may (mostly) be, she has spent quite a bit of time exploring how people interact with … Continue reading →

Dr Joy Sumner gained her Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees in Natural Sciences (focusing on materials science) from the University of Cambridge, but tried to break this up by spending a year at MIT in the USA.  Returning to the … Continue reading →

Raffaella Villa is a Senior Lecturer in biopress technology at Cranfield University. Raffaella is an applied microbiologist with particular expertise in microbial and enzymatic processes, which she has adapted to the waste and environmental sectors. She is leading national authority … Continue reading →

Vibha Srivastava is currently a PhD student at The Open University, Milton Keynes. She is fascinated with space and has a strong interest to contribute towards a future where humanity will settle at other planetary bodies like Moon and Mars. … Continue reading →

Emily Lines is a lecturer at the School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests combine ecology, remote sensing and the terrestrial carbon cycle, with particular emphasis on forest ecology and data assimilation. She is interested in answering questions on … Continue reading →

By Tosin Onabanjo, Cranfield University   In the movie ‘Divergent (2014)’, Beatrice Prior was born into in a world governed by division into factions: a system where you could only be one thing — abnegation, amity, dauntless, erudite or candour. … Continue reading →

Julia Cooke is a Lecturer in Ecology at the Open University, Milton Keynes.  She is a plant functional biologist, who enjoys fieldwork – from counting thousands of seedlings in outback Australia, to collecting leaves in savannas to making measurements from … Continue reading →

Sasha Berdichevski is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. She studied medical science and physiology, and then switched to tissue engineering. Sasha tells us that her father encouraged her to question the world around her and how … Continue reading →