Congratulations to Hannah Cooper and Jasmine Burr-Hersey, cohort 1 STARS students, who have been awarded travel grants by the British Society for Soil Science to travel to the 21st World Congress of Soil Science in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this August.  This is an amazing opportunity for them to join such a large and prestigious […]

Exciting developments for 3rd year STARS student Jasmine Burr-Hersey, who has been involved in an outreach project in conjunction with the Hounsfield 3D X-Ray Computed Tomography facility at the University of Nottingham. Last week saw the launch of a new website which showcases the wonderful world of plant roots. Both images and videos of undisturbed root […]

Congratulations to Alex Williams, in the second year of his PhD with STARS, who has been accepted on to the National PhD Training Programme in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Research. Alex, whose project is looking at antibiotic resistance on the farm, evaluating risks to soils, crops and human health, will join a multidisciplinary group of PhD […]

STARS is happy to announce that we have been awarded an additional studentship through the NERC National Productivity Investment Fund. Projects for this studentship are currently being sought and will be advertised on the STARS website soon. This is a great opportunity, building on the successful PhD level soils science training, which the STARS CDT […]

As part of the STARS training programme, cohort 1 attended the European Geoscience Union (EGU) assembly this April, accompanied by STARS director, Phil Haygarth. As well being able to appreciate the breadth of science presentations at the week-long event, STARS students were more deeply involved, co-convening a session in the Soil Systems Science division of […]

STARS is excited to be planning a conference for all its students and supervisors at the Low Wood Bay, Windermere, 15th-17th January 2019. More information to follow.

STARS PhD Researcher Dan Evans (Lancaster University) was last month awarded a £19,000 grant from the NERC Cosmogenic Isotope Analysis Facility (CIAF). Based in East Kilbride, Scotland, the facility provides cosmogenic radionuclide analytical facilities to scientists interested in yielding fundamental information about rates of landform evolution. Dan spent just under a year formulating the application […]

Cohort 2 have recently returned from a very successful fieldtrip to Tenerife, following in the footsteps of their colleagues in Cohort 1 and in search of those teabags so carefully buried there for them. The trip was led by Davey Jones, Dave Chadwick, Andy Tye and Emma Sayer, with a guest appearance by Phil Haygarth. […]

The STARS CDT has produced another short film addressing the importance of effective communication of scientific research to stakeholders, policy makers and end users. The film features STARS students discussing their experiences of communication, from government policy briefings to practical advice for farmers. As well as the students, we hear from experts in the field of […]

Congratulations to Cohort 1 student, Paul George who’s first PhD paper is now published. The paper, “Evaluation of mesofauna communities as soil quality indicators in a national-level monitoring programme” is published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry. The research looked at mesofauna from soil cores collected throughout Wales as part of the nationwide soil monitoring programme. […]