People

Richard is an Irish ecophysiologist who joined the Trinity College Dublin Botany Department as a Research Assistant on the Witness Tree Project in 2025. His work looks at how plants sense, respond to and record environmental change, with a particular focus on air pollution and carbon–water exchange dynamics. He recently completed a dual MSc in Global Forestry (University of Copenhagen) and Tropical Agroecology (AgroParisTech), where his thesis examined the ecohydrological drivers and mechanisms underlying Birch-effect respiration pulses in East African dryland savannas. His research combined eddy-covariance flux data, event-scale modelling and machine-learning approaches to advance our understanding of physiological limitation transitions in water-constrained ecosystems.

Richard has worked with several international research centres, including ILRI’s Mazingira Centre in Kenya, Agroscope in Switzerland, CIRAD Montpellier and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena.

When he’s not working, he’s usually planning his next expedition or finding new excuses to talk about music.