Profile

My name is Steve – I live in Lancaster, in northern England, with my wife, two children, cat and rabbit (the last two have an interesting relationship!). Outside of work, I love looking for all kinds of wildlife, though I am especially keen on bird watching. I also like to listen to music and play the guitar (mostly my acoustic). I enjoy drawing (in ink) – sometimes I draw wildlife and sometimes my own creations.

I work with a team of scientists at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and, together, we research how climate change and other issues, like pollution, affect lake ecosystems. Lakes host a wide diversity of wildlife, including birds, fish and insects, but you can learn a lot about how lakes are changing by looking at the microscopic plants and animals that live throughout their waters – the plankton. Some plankton are plant-like and carry out photosynthesis (phytoplankton), while some eat other organisms and organic matter to get their energy (zooplankton). A big part of my job, when i’m not managing my team, is interpreting data on plankton communities, so we can understand how the ecosystem is changing.

Most days I start work at about 8:30am and I try to spend some time, first thing in the morning, reading research papers so that I can find out about new discoveries that might give me ideas for my own research. I lead a fantastic team of scientists, who have lots of different freshwater ecology skills, and spend a lot of my day keeping my amazing team informed on what is happening in our organisation. I have a wide range of other duties though. I write proposals to win money for new research projects on important scientific issues, analyse data that my team have collected, and write up research results as articles for scientific journals. Team work is a huge part of my day to day life.