Posts in "Research"

I model projections of bioenergy crop yield and energy, carbon capture, and environmental impacts, and in the last year myself and Astley Hastings have published three papers on Miscanthus x giganteus as a bioenergy crop. What I have discovered is that in England miscanthus is a robust bioenergy crop against…

As we approach the milestone of a year since the Covid-19 pandemic forced a seismic shift in the delivery of teaching in universities around the world, I reflect on our experience of blended learning here in the School of Biological Sciences.

At the beginning of 2020, the term “blended learning”…

When I mention that my PhD is in wildfire ecology, most people immediately ask if I study the fires in Australia or California. I am often met with surprise when I reply that I study Scottish wildfires and that there are in fact plenty of wildfires here. While these fires…

The astronomer Carl Sagan famously said that “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” But while…

I am one of the newly appointed research fellows at the School of Biological Sciences. Before joining the University of Aberdeen,…

1. When you gather your data together it never looks like much

 I feel like I can work super hard, spend long hours in the lab running experiments and then when the time comes for me to gather that data together to show my supervisor it looks like…*drumroll*…‘nothing’! Several weeks…

Moths get a bad reputation as the dull brown insects that devour our winter jumpers. In fact, they are an extremely diverse and colourful group.There are approximately 2500 species of moths in the UK (only 5 of these will feed on our clothing!. They play key roles in our ecosystems,…

This year has been a challenging one for all of us.  Working from home during the COVID pandemic has thrown a lot of what we value about academic culture into disarray. The camaraderie, structure and mutual support that gets us through the tough days and weeks of research are difficult…

Whenever I tell people that I am a PhD student working on disease ecology and genetics, they picture me in a white lab coat squinting thoughtfully at a PCR I ran earlier. While this is partly true, every year for 6 weeks you will find me somewhere completely different. Here’s…

Why two human plague cases and a squirrel were all people could talk about for 2 weeks in July

I’m a PhD student in the Zoology dept, studying the movement of fleas and rats that carry the plague in Madagascar, one of the worst affected countries in the world, reporting…