Dr Steve Portugal, The University of Oxford

Congrats first author and former PhD student, Hana Merchant, on getting another PhD paper accepted. This one is in Genome Biology and Evolution, and it’s all about…. genomes and genes in Common Mole Rat.

Thrilled to lead the team that has led to Biological Sciences being awarded its first Athena Swan Silver Award.

Our paper all about eggshell thickness is now out in Ibis. Congrats first author Marie. You can read it here!

Paper out in Scientific Reports.

Congratulations Hana Merchant on getting your ‘covid chapter’ out. Titled “No evidence for a signal in mammalian basal metabolic rate associated with a fossorial lifestyle”. You can read it here!

Congratulations Rosa Gleave on your paper out in People and Nature. We show that local ecological knowledge can identify potential threats, new breeding sites & landscape changes correlated with the presence or absence of the threatened Blue-crowned Laughingthrush.

Thank you to Whitgift School for permitting us to measure the visual fields of their lovely Peacocks.

Enjoying a visit to Vienna, to meet with people from the Konrad Lorenz Institute, and also meet the amazing wild Black-bellied Hamsters there.

Congratulations (former) PhD student Hana Merchant on getting your ‘covid chapter’ accepted in Scientific Reports (and the 2nd paper from your PhD). Titled “No evidence for a signal in mammalian basal metabolic rate associated with a fossorial lifestyle”. More to follow.

This week has been the annual RHUL Postgraduate Symposium. Birds were well presented by the lab. Congratulations to Lucy Meddings, who won best MSc talk, and Alex Lamond, who was runner-up for best MSc poster.

With Cecylia just successfully defending her thesis, it got me thinking about how all my prior PhD students are doing. Thankfully, they’re all doing grand. Hana Merchant is currently working at the Natural History Museum, before starting a postdoc in September in Uppsala. Lucy Taylor is now the Programme Manager at Oxford University for the Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP. Steph McClelland is an Associate Editor at Nature Communications. Sam Jones is now on his 2nd postdoc in California, following his first in Cyprus, and Dan Sankey is also on his 2nd postdoc in Newcastle, following his first at Exeter. Congrats all!