Botany-Zoology Postgraduate Symposium 2024

Each year at Trinity College Dublin, the Botany-Zoology Postgraduate Symposium provides a space for students to voice their research and present their projects to the wider School of Natural Sciences.

This year’s symposium organised, among others, by Antonietta Knetge, welcomed keynote speakers Anja Murray and Dr. Cordula Scherer to share their career milestones. Anja Murray is an ecologist with a decade-long presence in Irish media ranging from broadcasting the RTÉ 1programs ‘Eco eye’, ‘Root and Branch’ to writing the weekly ‘Nature File’ on RTÉ Lyric FM as well as pieces for the Irish Examiner. Dr. Scherer is an applied marine ecologist and research fellow at the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities. Scherer has worked on a range of ERC and IRC-funded projects from ‘4OCEANS’, ‘NorFish’, and ‘Food Smart Dublin’ to sustainably connect a healthy marine environment to human history and culture.

This year’s symposium was judged by Dr. Richard Nair and Dr. James Barnett and the awards were given as follows:

The best 10-minute talk was awarded to Charlotte Morgan on ‘Arable Crop Production and the Threat of Herbicide Resistance’. Charlotte is in the second year of her PhD and won the best 5-minute talk award at last year’s symposium. The award for best 5-minute talk this year went to MacDara Allison for ‘The Role of Changing Ocean Currents in Plankton Transport Dynamics: Insights From Numerical Simulations and Observational Data’. Simon Benson and Emma King were awarded for audience choice for their talks on ‘Kelp Functional Traits: Alginate Evolution, Structure and Function’ and ‘Natural Capital Accounting for Windfarms’, respectively.