I am Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, currently funded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 through a Research Fellowship. My main research aim is to identify and characterise factors that underpin virus and vector success in agricultural ecosystems (vector-borne disease in agricultural systems). I also contribute towards multi-partner projects that aim to develop smart and sustainable AI-driven pest management solutions and I have an ongoing and active interest in the identification and characterisation of plant traits that confer resistance against aphids.  
 
Brief Profile:
I was awarded my PhD in 2019 from The University of Dundee. My PhD research primarily focussed on investigating how drought stress affects the plant-aphid relationship. With a sub-focus examining how aphid endosymbionts influence aphid behaviour and success in this system.

In 2019 I took up an Entomology position at ADAS. Here I worked on numerous research projects, with the overall aim to identifying sustainable methods for herbivorous insect management. Key projects I contributed to, and managed, at ADAS include insecticide resistance monitoring, herbivorous insect population modelling, and developing novel  image-analysis methods to support insect identification.

In 2021 I moved to the Institute of Geobotany at Leibniz University of Hannover. My research at Hannover was funded by an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and a research grant provided by the British Ecological Society. Here my research  investigated how landscape complexity, surrounding crop diversity, and crop history affects the intra-specific diversity (e.g. genotype, endosymbiont presence) in cereal aphids and the cabbage stem flea beetle and aims to highlight ecological links between landscape diversity and endosymbiont communities within these important herbivorous insect species.