Animal Section :

Winner: Patrice Pottier  (University of New South Wales)

I am a Postdoctoral researcher at The Australian National University under the supervision of Daniel Noble. I am also an Adjunct Associate Lecturer at UNSW Sydney, working under the supervision of Losia Lagisz and Shinichi Nakagawa. Before joining the I-DEEL and Noble lab, I did my BSc. and MSc. at the University of Tours (France). I worked with Marlène Goubault and Anthony Mathiron on aggressiveness and conflict resolution in parasitoid wasps. I then moved to the University of Alabama to work with Ryan Earley as a research assistant. There, I investigated the impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on the behaviour and life-history of fish. I recently completed my PhD at UNSW Sydney with Shinichi Nakagawa and Szymon Drobniak, where I assessed the plasticity and resilience of ectotherms to global warming.

While my interests are broad, I am primarily interested in the responses of animals to rapid environmental change. Particularly, I strive to understand what drives the variation in plasticity and adaptation to changing temperatures. My research is question-driven rather than organism-driven, and I enjoy working with a broad range of organisms. I use a combination of data synthesis, meta-analysis, and laboratory experiments to address my questions in various species. I am also an advocate for Open Science and a member of the board of directors of The Society for Open, Reproducible, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE).

Outside of academia, I love surfing, travelling, and eating all the vegan food the world has to offer.

Cell Section :

Winner:   Anne-Pia Marty   (University of Cambridge)

Pia has a Bachelor of Natural Sciences with a year of Political Sciences and Economics. She is currently a Master’s student in the University of Geneva and Tsinghua University in ‘Innovation, Human Development and Sustainability’ which basically means the study of science and how that impacts the world to make it more sustainable. She is interested in open source solutions and has a familiarity with the world of Open Hardware as well as that of Research.

Within the Open Bioeconomy Lab, Pia works on the Open Backbone. Her goal is to ensure plasmid stability without relying on antibiotics and also building an open source photometer as an easy-to-build, cheap and accessible lab tool which will also be a module for the open source bioreactor.

Plant Section :

Winner: Jian You Wang   (KAUST: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)

Jian You Wang currently works at the Center for Desert Agriculture​, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Jian You does research in Agricultural Plant Science, Biochemistry and Botany. Jian You uses analytical biochemistry to identify metabolites and combines transcriptomic strategies to study growth-regulatory metabolism.