Meet Inês Afonso and Reiss Bush, two of our latest students joining the group
Today we are happy to introduce Inês Afonso, MSc student from Portugal on an ERASMUS exchange programme and Reiss Bush, MSc student from our Freshwater and Marine Ecology Programme.
In the coming days, we will introduce the new MSc Students who have recently joined our group. Todays, Inês and Reiss tell us a bit more about their story:
"I made my undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal. During this period I studied the morphology, histology and cytology of sea anemones. I also choose to make a curricular internship that allowed me to acquire some experience on conservation and ecology research while working in the project of Sea Turtle Conservation at Maio Biodiversity Foundation (FMB) in Cape Verde.
Before starting my master in Applied Biology at UA, I joined FMB team again. While working with sea turtles with FMB I have improved my ability to collect, manage and analyse data. As a team leader, I was responsible for the coordination of all the participants on night patrols during hatching season, while supervising their work and manage materials and volunteers. While responsible for the hatchery I also developed awareness activities for local population and tourists, with a special focus on children. It was during this period that I have met Chris. And as my goals for master were to improve my lab skills and keep working on conservation and ecology, I saw on Chris projects an opportunity to do it.
I am now an Erasmus student doing an internship for my master. I have joined the group to be part of the project “Evaluation of sex ratio in sea turtles”. I can’t wait until the current situation been solved for obvious reasons and also to keep doing lab procedures - hormones extractions and quantification. Meanwhile, I will be working on some data analysis and organise my report."
"After graduating with a BSc in Zoology from the University of Sheffield, I travelled to Honduras where I qualified as a PADI Divemaster and subsequently volunteered at a whale shark and oceanic research centre. This sparked my interest in the ocean and led me to apply for the MSc in Freshwater and Marine Ecology at Queen Mary University of London, where I am currently studying. For my master's project I am investigating stable isotopes as an ecological trait of loggerhead turtle distribution in the Cape Verde archipelago; specifically, I am looking at whether there is a relationship between feeding location and nesting location. In the future, I hope to pursue a career in marine conservation."