Six PhD studentships awarded for environmental science research Bangor University

Six high-calibre graduates from universities across the UK have been awarded prestigious studentships from the Natural Environment Research Council for PhD research projects at Bangor University. 

The awards, made by the Envision Doctoral Training Partnership, are designed to develop the next generation of leaders in environmental science.  This success reflects the high status of environmental research at Bangor University.  All six PhD projects project will combine ground-breaking research with important impacts on environmental management.Three of the projects address the biological mechanisms controlling harmful impacts on the environment, which is crucial to inform our response.  They focus on:             

  • The chemical-guided ecological interactions between the pathogen honey fungus and trees that it infects            
  • The evolution of plant tolerance of heavy metal pollution            
  • How night-time light pollution affects the biological rhythms of marine organismsTwo of the projects address major issues related to global climate change:
  • How emissions from the soil of the powerful greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, are increased by extreme weather events
  • Developing a new approach to modelling the impact on estuaries of climate change, flooding and pollution, based on fine-scale processesThe final project is related to a critical issue in conservation:
  • How the survival of the endangered monkey species, red colobus, is affected by patches of agriculture in its forest habitat in Zanzibar

Professor John Healey, Director of Research in Bangor University’s College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering commented “This success reflects the high status of environmental science research at Bangor University, with the six projects to be supervised by Bangor academics with a high international reputation in their fields. These awards demonstrate the importance of the Envision partnership between Lancaster, Bangor and Nottingham Universities together with three prestigious research institutions.

Publication date: 1 June 2020