People
Madeline Carins-Murphy
Postdoctoral Fellow
Ibrahim bourbia
PhD candidate. Previously studied flower hydraulics under drought, and currently investigating root water uptake under soil water stress in woody and herbaceous plants using non-invasive rehydration techniques.
Kate Johnson
PhD candidate studying how failure of the plant water transport system (xylem) leads to tree death under drought conditions. She is interested in how drought-induced xylem failure spreads through whole trees and the link between xylem connectivity and the pattern of this failure.
Frances Sussmilch
ARC DECRA Fellow. Her research focusses on investigating the genes that control stomatal responses to dehydration and their evolution.
Matilda Brown
PhD candidate, studying ways to apply machine learning to plant science. Her interests include plant anatomy, palaeobotany, stomata and epidermal morphology. And cake.
Vanessa Tonet
PhD candidate. Her research focusses on investigating the impact of drought and heat stress on plants.
Carola Pritzkow
Postdoctoral fellow. Her research focuses on understanding the importance of hydraulics for plants under drought. She explores natural drought stress development, potential hydraulic limitations under drought and their resulting impact on growth, recovery, and plant survival under natural conditions.
Freya Richardson
PhD candidate. Her research focuses on the adaptive differences between leaves with stomata distributed across one as opposed to both leaf surfaces. Despite well documented advantages to amphistomaty (stomata present on both leaf surfaces), hypostomatic leaves (lower stomata only) are globally more common. She is interested in the functional processes which underpin these two modes of stomatal distribution.
Beatrice Harrison Day
PhD candidate. She is investigating the impacts of heat and drought on plant reproduction. She is interested in the relative vulnerability of reproductive and vegetative tissues based on life history.
Deborah Corso
PhD candidate. Her research aims at understanding the physiological processes involved in the response to water stress in wheat (Triticum sp.) and at investigating the role of domestication in the evolution of drought resistance in wheat (from wild ancestors to modern species and varieties)
Travis Britton
PhD candidate. His research explores how interactions for water between coexisting trees influences growth and mortality. He is particularly interested in the capacity of such interactions to modify the impacts of future environmental change in forest systems.