Women in STEM Seminar: From forests to oceans: ecosystem responses to environmental change

The impact of human-driven environmental change is a major driver of biodiversity loss. This has profound implications for species and our ecosystems across the planet, from forests to oceans. An improved understanding of how different ecosystems interact with the climate is vital in reaching a sustainable balance between productive and healthy ecosystems. In this fourth Women in STEM seminar, we bring together three researchers who all work on different aspects of ecosystem responses to environmental change for a panel discussion.

Speakers:
Professor Anne Robertson (event Chair) is a freshwater community ecologist based at the University of Roehampton, specializing in sub-surface ecology. Her research focuses upon groundwater community assembly and the interactions between aquatic food webs and disturbances such as emerging contaminants (pharmaceuticals and microplastics) and flooding. Her funders include NERC, AHRC, Leverhulme Trust, EU-MSCA, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, British Council & Environment Agency. She is increasingly involved in interdisciplinary research and collaborates with hydrologists, contaminant scientists, economists, lawyers, social anthropologists and philosophers amongst other disciplines. She is a founder member of the Roehampton Climate Network.

Dr Emma Cavan is a Research Fellow at Imperial College London in marine biogeochemistry and ecology. She is interested in all things to do with carbon cycling in the oceans by organisms that live in the water column – plankton, krill, fish and whales. She did her PhD at the National Oceanography Centre and University of Southampton, before taking up post-doc positions at the University of Tasmania (Australia) and Imperial. She has experience in policy having recently finished a secondment in the UK government (DEFRA) and has close links with various UK learned societies and NGOs. Emma also has experience working as a consultant for industry.

Dr Estrella Luna Diez studied agronomy in Spain before moving to the UK to do her PhD at Lancaster University based at Rothamsted Research. She did a postdoc at the University of Sheffield and then secured a BBSRC Future Leader Fellowship (now called Discovery Fellowships) based in Sheffield. Half way through her fellowship she got an academic position at the University of Birmingham where she is hosted at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR). In BIFoR, she has been able to apply her knowledge in crops into forest trees in the context of climate change. Her research group interests are driven by the exceptional ability of plants to adapt to hostile environments and they investigate the molecular, genetic, biochemical and epigenetic mechanisms that mark plant defence responses to diseases. Their research aims to make the plant immune system stronger so that plants are able to fight diseases better.

Attending the event
This event is taking place online and will also be live-streamed in the Grantham Institute boardroom at the South Kensington campus. The in-person screening will be followed by a networking session.