Profile

I am lucky to live in the countryside with my family. We have green rolling hills around us and have a great view of the sunset every evening (except when it is overcast). I love gardening and long walks.

I am a chemical ecologist. I studied chemistry and biology and luckily there is a field of research that combines both: chemical ecology. It is the science of discovering scent molecules (odours) that act like messengers between living things. This is very relevant in agriculture, where crop plants we grow are eaten by a lot of different insects, and we need environmentally friendly ways to reduce the damage they do.

Most insects I study compete with us for food, so we use the molecules we identify from either the insects themselves or their host plants to better protect our crops. How? For example, the compounds insects communicate with each other (called pheromones) can be isolated in tiny amounts from them and their structures identified using very sensitive machines. Once we know what these compounds look like, we can make them in the lab and use them in the crop fields to lure insects into traps. This is how we monitor whether they are around in an area and how many of them are around, and growers will only need to spray with insecticides (toxins) if the insects are there. This is a smart and clean way to ensure food security, because using such natural compounds for the surveillance of the pest insects means that growers do not need to spray when the pest is not there! Better for the environment and better for human health.

There are many other ways we can use the messenger chemicals I work with in crop protection. We can breed crop plants that repel (push away) the pests themselves or encourage natural enemies with these odour molecules to come to protect our crops for us.

I spend a lot of time planning and thinking about my experiments. Careful planning is important, because it keeps you focussed. I study the pest insects we want to combat in great detail by observing their behaviour out in the field on their host plant and also in the lab.

To isolate attractive (or even repellent) scent molecules from the insects or the plants they eat, I use sophisticated methods that require a lot of patience and practice. Usually these molecules are around in very minute amounts, so I make sure I collect as much as I can.

The machines I use to help tell what the isolated scent molecules look like are very smart, so working together with them means I can more easily do my job and work out the chemical structures!

Making these compounds also needs a lot of planning, but it is very satisfying to go out into the field and see how the insects respond to them. The ultimate satisfaction comes when the farmers are happy with our inventions and they can use them in their fields.