Supervisors: Dr Heather Knight and Professor Marc Knight

As an undergraduate I studied biology at Newcastle University, completing a summer project based on salt stress and tolerance in plants and a dissertation project investigating the role of chronic stress on gene expression in chickens. I then went on to complete a master’s degree in biotechnology, also at Newcastle, which included a project investigating aquaporin selection, expression and efficiency in plants.

Project Title: investigating the role of the cell wall in cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in Arabidopsis

Based in Durham University’s Department of Biosciences, my project is allowing me to, broadly, explore the role of the plant cell wall in freezing tolerance. At present, I am using exciting techniques such as microarray polymer profiling and thermal imaging to elucidate the changes which take place in the cell wall when a plant undergoes acclimation to cold temperatures. In the future I am hoping to use a number of microscopy-based assays to measure cell-wall characteristics such as tensile strength, extensibility and pore size and determine how these are related to freezing tolerance.

Other activities

I’ve had the chance to produce educational materials for Durham Botanic Garden, such as posters, which were displayed to the public. I’ve attended conferences including the North East Postgraduate conference, the Molecular Plant Biology Symposium and an N8 AgriFood Doctoral Seminar on scientific publishing.