Environmental Research students win Elsevier travel grants

Congratulations to St Edmund Hall postgraduate students Lucy Kissick and Ben Fernando, who both won Elsevier travel grants yesterday at the student conference of the Oxford NERC DTP (Natural Environment Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership) in Environmental Research.

Second-year Environmental Research DPhil students were eligible to win one of the three awards, of £1000 each, if they gave a five-minute ‘lightning talk’ and presented a poster. The contest was judged by a representative from Elsevier and the course co-ordinator Victoria Forth.

Lucy is studying whether ancient lakes on Mars were releasing a greenhouse gas that could have kept the planet warm several billion years ago. This is really important because back then the Sun was much dimmer than today and it is a long-standing mystery how both Earth and Mars were not both frozen solid.

Ben’s research focusses on developing a model of the Sun’s oscillations, which allows us to peer beneath its surface and better understand its structure, dynamics and evolution, and the risks that its variability poses to us. There are also some exciting applications of the methods he is developing for use in earthquake early warning.

“I’m very proud to have won this award, which feels like a wonderful reward for a rather exhausting term of developing my code,” said Ben. “I’m especially glad that Lucy has won as well, as we’re the only two people on our course in Earth Sciences not actually studying the Earth directly!”

Oxford NERC DTP in Environmental Research