This year’s Departmental Seminar Day saw the department come together for its annual gathering to showcase its research on 22nd March 2019.  Short talks were given from across the broad range of subjects currently researched in the department.   The talks provide an opportunity for researchers, from all levels, to highlight their work to the rest of the department; whether it be some data they had just brought back from the field or things they have been working on for some time. 

This year five of our PhD students were persuaded to give “PechaKucha” talks, ie 20 powerpoint slides, 20 seconds per slide.  All five students did a fantastic job, giving clear, interesting and to the point talks.  The talks were judged by a small panel with Chris Duncan’s talk on “Decline and Fall: Group extinction in cooperatively breeding meerkats winning the prize. 

This year we had a bumper crop of posters covering a large array of subjects.  The prizes were awarded to:

1st Prize, Hannah Wauchope: “Quantifying the impact of protected areas on global waterbird population trends

2nd Prize, Olivia Tidswell: “Filling in the gaps: does nubbin play a role in axial patterning of the red flour beetle”.

3rd Prize, Kristina Klein: “Neural Circuits of Operant Conditioning”.

The seminar day programme schedules in ample break time to give the speakers and poster presenters an opportunity to talk about their work with the members of the department they might not normally meet. 

This year’s Seminar day was expertly organised by Dr Rahia Mashoodh and Dr Emília Santos.