Lab Members
(click photo or name for full biography)
Academics
Professor Nicholas Roberts
Nick is a Professor of Sensory Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences and is currently the Head of the School of Biological Sciences. His research spans many aspects of visual ecology, animal vision and light pollution. He is particularly interested in new optical principles that animals exploit for visually guided behaviours. The lab has pioneered and uses several novel optical and behavioural techniques.
Dr Martin How
Martin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences and was previously a Royal Society University Research Fellow. His research focuses predominately on the visual ecology of marine and intertidal organisms. Specifically, he studies the detection of polarized light in mantis shrimps and fiddler crabs, colour vision in crustaceans and skin camouflage patterns in a variety of species, including nudibranchs, cuttlefish and zebra.
Research Fellows
Dr Cedric van den Berg
Cedric joined the ‘Ecology of Vision’ lab in 2022 for a 2-year research position funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation as a ‘Postdoc mobility’ research fellow.
His current project aims to integrate polarisation imaging into existing visual modelling frameworks to investigate small-field polarisation contrast perception in marine crustaceans and cephalopods.
Dr Matteo Santon
Matteo is an EU Marie Currie Research Fellow working on the visual ecology of cuttlefish and mantis shrimp.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Rochelle Meah
Rochelle is a postdoctoral researcher in the group. She completed her PhD in Bristol and was supervised by Nick Roberts and Lauren Sumner-Rooney (Berlin). Her research focuses on how light pollution affects the visual ecology of insects.
PhD Students
Martha Daniel
Martha is a cotutelle PhD student funded by the EPSRC and iMQRES and supervised by Martin How and Ajay Narendra (Macquarie University). Her project will compare visual navigation by mantis shrimp and bull ants, with a particular focus on how they use polarized light.
Will Lunt
Will is a joint PhD student co-supervised by Martin How in Biology, and Jonathan Rossiter and Martin Homer in Engineering Mathematics. His research focuses on how colour-changing cephalopods behave to optimise camouflage and on developing bio-inspired intelligent textiles.
Postgraduate Masters Students
Anna McQuillan
Anna is a Masters by Research student with Martin How. Her focus is on the polarised signals of the beautiful Peacock Mantis Shrimp
Taya Alferoff
Taya is a Masters by Research student with Martin How.
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN JOINING THE GROUP?
There are always a number of opportunities in our lab, especially for work on visual ecology and other areas of natural photonics.
Please get in touch if you are interested.
PREVIOUS LAB MEMBERS
Dr Benito Wainwright - 1851 Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews
Dr Isla Davidson - completed her NERC funded PhD
Richard Massy - completed his at
Charlotte Lewis - completed her Masters in the University of Bristol
Dr Shelby Temple - CEO of Azul Optics and Key Partnerships manager at the University of Bristol
Dr Ally Irwin - Postdoc at the University of Copenhagen
Dr Emelie Brodrick - Postdoc at Exeter University
Dr Ilse Daly - Started her own company
Dr Sam Smithers - Research Fellow at NorthEastern University, Boston, USA.
Vun Wen Jie - Completed a PhD with Prof. Emily Baird, University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Dr Alex Tibbs - Has now finished PhD
Sam Chivers - Research Assocaite UT Health San Antonio
Dr Kathryn Feller - Assistant Professor at Union College.
Dr Xin Wang - Has now finished his PhD at Hfei University of Technology, China.
Dr David Wilby - Research Software Engineer, University of Sheffield.
Dr Milly Sharkey - Postdoc in the Wardill Laboratory, University of Minnesota, USA.
Dr James Foster - Currently a Group Leader at the University of Konstanz.
Dr Tom Jordan - Earth Observation Scientist and Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Lizard Island - Spring 2014