Profile

About me

I live in Reading with my boyfriend in a small but cosy flat. We don’t have any pets but we would like a cat one day! My favourite takeaway is Chinese, but I also love pizza. My favourite things to do are: walking in the countryside, listening to music, cooking food from different countries, and going out with my friends. My absolute favourite animals are insects, because there are so many of them and I think they’re cute. I love to try and work out the names of different bugs that I find outside (and sometimes inside!). My personal pronouns are she/her.

For my PhD project, I am using data already collected by volunteers and other scientists over many years to calculate trends (or changes over time) in insect populations, and comparing and contrasting between different types of insects in different types of habitat and region. I am also using this data to try and understand how these population changes could impact the roles that insects play in the environment – for example, the pollination of crops. So, although I get to learn a lot about insects themselves, my work mainly involves being a computer scientist, as I am mainly writing computer code to find out what I need to know!

At the moment I am working on my laptop at home, like lots of people are. But before we had to start staying at home, I was working in an office environment with other students, at the ‘UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology’ (not all PhD students have to be at University!). Although I’m not outside all the time looking for bugs, I really love working in the office because I get to talk to top scientists all the time and I learn a lot from them!