I am an agricultural and ecological entomologist working to increase crop and plant health resilience in natural ecosystems.

I currently lead the entomology and vector team (~16 members) at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, the arms-length public sector research body of the Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland. Here I oversee the delivery of a statutory scientific work programme covering crop, plant, animal, and environment health; this includes delivery of the Northern Ireland pesticide usage survey, plant health surveillance, livestock vector monitoring, and the Northern Ireland protected zone survey. In addition to the statutory work programme, the team also delivers a suite of research projects centred on vector biology, biological modelling, optimisation of monitoring & surveillance methods, and chemical ecology.

As an expert in agricultural entomology, ecological entomology, and crop health I hold an editor-in-chief position at the Royal Entomological Society's journal Agricultural and Forest Entomology, sit as a committee member for the UK Insecticide Resistance Action Group, and on the Wheat Initiative's Expert Working Group on Wheat Pests.

Background.
I was awarded my PhD in 2019 from The University of Dundee. My PhD research focused on investigating how drought stress affects the plant-aphid relationship. With a sub-focus examining how aphid endosymbionts influence aphid behaviour and success.

In September 2019 I took up an Entomology position at the agriculture and environment consultancy organisation, RSK ADAS Ltd. Here I contributed to numerous research projects to develop sustainable methods for herbivorous insect management. Key projects include insecticide resistance monitoring, herbivorous insect population modelling, and developing novel  image-analysis methods to support insect identification.

In 2021 I secured an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and moved to the Institute of Geobotany at Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany. Here my research  investigated how the structure and composition of the agricultural landscape affects intra-specific diversity (e.g. genotype, endosymbiont presence) in cereal aphids and the cabbage stem flea beetle. The overall aim of these projects were to highlight ecological links between landscape diversity and endosymbiont communities within important herbivorous insect species.

Following my Humboldt Fellowship I was awarded a Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and moved to the University of Liverpool. At Liverpool my research aimed to  identify and characterise factors that underpin virus and vector success in agricultural ecosystems, focusing on cereal aphids and barley yellow dwarf virus. I also secured additional funding via Innovate UK for the development of an AI-driven tool to support on-farm sustainable pest management.