Congratulations Dr Ying Wang - Diester DNA Organic Phosphorus PhD Defence

Today my PhD student Ying defended her PhD on diester DNA organic phosphorus transfer through the soil-water continuum.  Her examiners were Dr Marc Stutter (James Hutton Institute) and Prof Hao Zhang (Lancaster University).  Ying is pictured here with me and her co supervisor Dr Ben Surridge.

Below is Ying pictured with her two examiners.

Well done Ying!

Oxisol - Below the rainforest floor......

To help the celebration of International Year of Soil, here I am inside an oxisol!

I have just returned from an enthrawling week visiting Barro Colarado Island, a research Island in the Panama Canal, operated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institure.  We visited aspart of a BBSRC Partnering Award to develop links between ourselves and the research group of Dr Ben Turner on new techniques on phosphorus research.  Colleagues from Rothamsted Research, where I used to work, as well as others from ETH Zurich and Costa Rica, were also partners on the research visit. 

The picture shows me standing about 1.5 m deep in an oxisol soil pit, surrounded by Ben and his colleague Dayana from the Smithsonian Soils lab.  The full set of pictures from the visit are shown here.