PhD | Ecology of the past

Introducing Adele Julier: New PCRG PhD researcher

October 14, 2013
adelecmj

Adele Julier and a Malvaceae

Hello! I’m Adele and I started my PhD about a week ago. It’s been a little intense but I can almost find the lab without a map now, so it is probably time to introduce myself.

I’ll be studying pollen-vegetation relationships in Ghana, as part of the NERC funded project ‘500,000 years of solar irradiance, climate and vegetation changes’. This means I’ll be using pollen traps to figure out how pollen outputs vary between (and sometimes within) different vegetation types in Ghana. I will also be trying my hand at chemotaxonomy and video making. I’m heading out to Ghana (along with Phil Jardine) in just over a week to do my first lot of field work which will involve seeing the plots, collecting existing traps, replacing them with new ones, and setting up some new sites. I’m very excited.

My background is broadly botanical; I did a BA at Magdalene College, Cambridge in Natural Sciences specialising in Plant Science and then an MSc in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.

Here’s a picture of me holding the biggest Malvaceae flower I’d ever seen and being incredibly happy about that.

To find out more about me visit my blog: Plants in real life

PCRG August

September 4, 2013
WDG

Will’s BES T-shirt logo swabbed at Greenman; for more microbes on festival kit visit the “Hall of shame” on http://www.besfest.org

August was a month for travel with PCRG members heading for Peru (Bryan, and he is still there), Greenman festival (William), INTECOL conference (William and Frazer), and the Royal Geographic Society annual meeting (William, Encarni, Frazer and Hayley). Detailed reports of the UK based travels are already on the blog, and hopefully we will get a post from Bryan on his Peruvian adventure once he is back.

Back in Milton Keynes work progressed with:

Hayley producing a revised full draft of her pollen counting methodology manuscript,
Frazer starting with the first tentative attempts to apply his chironomid training data set to fossil chironomid records,
Phil trialing inverted microscopes and training on the FTIR,
Encarni plotting field work in Ecuador (more travel for November-December),
William seeming to spend alot of time working on research strategy for the faculty, and thinking about writing teaching material for the ongoing revison of our level 2 environmental science module, and
most excitingly of all, Lottie submitting her PhD thesis! WELL DONE LOTTIE.

PCRG February

March 1, 2013
WDG

Four new workstations installed in the Past Environmental Change microscope lab

Excitement in February saw the arrival of a new research grant within the PCRG, to look at pollen and spore chemistry from Lake Bosumtwi (watch this space for new post-doc and PhD studentship positions), and (just in time) the expansion of benches in the microscope lab which will ensure that the new people will have spaces to sit in! In addition, we had a paper published with long time friends and collaborators at the University of Leeds; Roucoux et al. (2013).

Despite the disruption of the lab refit Hayley and Frazer have been cracking on with pollen and chironomid analysis. Encarni and Frazer returned from field work in Ecuador and half the samples have so far made it back to The Open University; we now wait with anticipation for customs to release the other box!

Four shiny new benches from the other side

Four shiny new workstations from the other side – woo

Meanwhile I have been working on exam questions for the Geological Record of Environmental Change module (S369), interviewing prospective PhD candidates for the October 2013 start projects and have been on a training course to learn about the Vitae support for research student training.