Massive congratulations to Prafulla Sujatha Nagesh, current Masters by Research student in our lab, who won a highly competitive SWBio DTP Studentship to continue working with us as a PhD student from September! We are absolutely thrilled to be able to keep you and work with you on what promises to be a super-fun project! Prafulla’s Masters project investigated how North American Sarracenia flava pitcher plants employ specialised slippery surfaces to trap insects. During this work, Prafulla noticed that the majority of prey insects inside the pitchers are flying insects such as bees, wasps and flies. She immediately asked herself how these are captured, given that they should be able to overcome the slippery surfaces by simply flying out of the trap?! This was the seed for Prafulla’s PhD plans. From September, she will work partly in our lab, partly in Shane Windsor’s Bioinspired Flight Lab in Bristol, to investigate the aerodynamics of insect flight inside narrow, tubular air spaces. We are super-excited for this project!

Huge congratulations as well to Oona Lessware who recently successfully defended her PhD and now re-joins us as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Funded by a Leverhulme Research Project Grant, she will work closely with our PhD students Katy Statham and Graham Sharpe to unravel how plants modify the wettability of their leaf surfaces.