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YSAS WINNERS
Each year, the SEB invites its early-career delegates to submit their abstract to the Young Scientist Award Session during the SEB Annual Conference. The session provides the opportunity for postgraduates and postdocs who are within 5 years since completing their PhD to showcase their talents and is designed to recognise the best young researchers in each section: Animal, Cell and Plant. Congratulations to this year’s winners of the Young Scientists Award Session!
KRISTIAN KIRADJIEV
Some of the biggest revelations in cell research arise when researchers look at a problem from a different angle or approach it with an alternative arsenal of skills. This is just the case for Kristian Kriadjiev, a postdoc at the University of Nottingham, who is working to better our understanding of hormone transport in plants through the development of mathematical models.
Kristian’s YSAS talk focused on one such model that can be used to predict how a particular growth hormone, gibberellic acid, is transported within the root of an Arabidopsis plant and how its levels are affected by external conditions such as the pH of the environment. ‘The mathematical model is validated against experimental data that have been collected from our collaborators at the Tel Aviv University and the University of Copenhagen, and it gives an excellent agreement with experimental results,’ he explains. ‘Our findings are being used to gain more insight into the biological mechanisms governing hormone transport without having to perform complex and time-consuming experiments, and our project has direct applications in the crops industry.’
While Kristian has already started to leave his mark in this area of research, he is a relatively new convert to cellular science. ‘My research background is actually in fluid dynamics and filtration, and I have only recently moved to mathematical biology,’ he explains. ‘I find the field full of interesting mathematics and welldefined applications, and, in the future, I would like to explore areas in human biology, microbiology and immunology, where mathematical models can be successfully applied.’
Not only does this award help to celebrate and promote Kristian’s professional development as a researcher, but it also conveys more personal rewards, as he describes: ‘I am thrilled and incredibly thankful to the SEB committee for awarding me this prize, because this means my work has been recognised on a professional level by experts in the field,’ he says. ‘I think this and the opportunity to discuss my work with like-minded academics are the most important aspects of the award.’
As well as returning to Nottingham as the Cell Section YSAS winner this year, Kristian feels that he has benefited from attending this year’s SEB Annual Conference and spending time with other researchers. ‘The SEB provides a great medium for disseminating research, career advice and networking with other academics,’ says Kristian. ‘I would like to say that this year’s conference in Montpellier was a great experience, not only because of the venue, but also because of the scope of research that was presented and the international scientists I communicated with.’
For any early-career researchers thinking of applying for the YSAS next year, Kristian recommends taking your time in ensuring your application shines the brightest possible spotlight on the potential impact of your research. ‘My simple advice is to invest an extra day or two in preparing the application, thinking about the novelty and biological importance of the results and, if selected, focusing on how to effectively deliver these messages through the presentation,’ he concludes.
CAMILLE LE ROY
The relationship between morphological form and function is central to many areas of biology, including comparative biomechanics, ecophysiology and organismal evolution. Thankfully, this broad relevance to research is matched in the range of techniques available to explore it, and this is something that Camille Le Roy, a postdoc working at Wageningen University, is certainly familiar with.
For his YSAS submission, Camille presented the story at the core of his PhD, starting with the selective pressures that influence insect wing shape evolution and introducing how these pressures drive differences in flight phenotypes. ‘We studied the adaptive codivergence in wing shape, flight behaviour and aerodynamic efficiency among morpho butterflies living in different forest strata by combining high-speed videography in the field with morphometric analyses and aerodynamic modelling,’ he explains. ‘By comparing canopy and understorey species, we showed that adaptation to an open canopy environment resulted in increased gliding flight efficiency.’ Camille’s combined-technique approach to research has included elements of ecological field research, 3D high-speed videography on freeflying butterflies, comparative phylogenetic morphometrics and computational aerodynamic modelling, helping to produce an informed understanding of how natural selection shapes complex phenotypes.
With regards to Camille’s future research focus, he is keen to extrapolate his interests in the variability of flight phenotypes to wider animal taxa. ‘After focusing on butterfly flight, I would like to study the diversification of other flying animals,’ he explains. ‘This could be other insects, but also why not birds or bats – and I would also be excited to study the diversification of swimming animals!’
When asked about winning the YSAS for the Animal Section, he not only talks about his feelings upon hearing the good news, but also reflects on how this achievement fits into his research journey so far. ‘I am extremely glad to win the Young Scientist Award,’ he says. ‘This makes a beautiful ending to the amazing adventure that my PhD was. I genuinely loved doing my PhD, both on the scientific and the human point of view and I think interest (or even passion) in the questions we investigate makes us work significantly better.’
The 2022 SEB Annual Conference was Camille’s first opportunity to physically walk and talk with other SEB members from all around the world, something that he has not taken for granted. ‘Before the 2022 conference in Montpellier, I only attended the SEB conference in its online version in 2021,’ he explains. ‘At that time, I had a first glimpse at the impressive diversity of researchers and topics covered by the conference, and I was quite eager to go in person and to meet the SEB community.’
Finally, Camille has a recommendation for future YSAS applicants that not only applies to this competition but is good guidance for any opportunity to share your research, whether for fellow academics or the general public. ‘If you are enthusiastic about your work, people will feel it in your written application as well as in your oral presentation,’ advises Camille. ‘I think it’s very important to convey not only science, but excitement and passion about what we do.’
TRISHA MCALLISTER
Across the globe, plants have adapted a multitude of innovative physical traits to enable their survival in different habitats and in the face of environmental threats. One such trait is the cuticle, a lipid-rich hydrophobic barrier that seals the epidermis of all above-ground organs to protect against these threats. While the cuticle has been well researched in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana, less effort has been made to understand cuticle development in economically significant species such as the cereal crop barley – and this is the research topic with which Trisha McAllister, a PhD student at the University of Dundee, wowed the YSAS panel of judges.
‘My research addresses this knowledge gap by combining molecular, genetic and biochemical approaches to characterise cuticle mutants in barley,’ explains Trisha. ‘Ultimately, we hope that our work will aid the development of more climate-resilient crops.’ Specifically, her YSAS talk focused on an example of her work in this area that had recently been published. ‘We described the identification and characterisation of a barley SHINE transcription factor that is essential for proper cuticle development,’ she says. ‘Loss of this transcription factor alters the expression levels of known cuticle metabolic genes and results in a striking loss of cuticular waxes.’ This, she explains, can have a disastrous impact on crop susceptibility to fungal infections and drought.
The 2022 SEB Annual Conference was
Trisha’s first time attending a SEB event and the experience has certainly left a positive impression. ‘I’d heard great things about the annual conferences, but I didn’t anticipate how welcoming and supportive the community would be,’ she says. ‘I came to the meeting alone but everyone I met made me feel right at home and I feel really honoured that I was selected for the YSAS award, but even just being shortlisted was an amazing opportunity.’ Trisha makes sure to also share her appreciation for the support provided to early-career researchers by the SEB and especially for those competing in the YSAS. ‘The SEB held a workshop for speakers prior to the conference to brief us on how the presentations would run and this was a really nice touch that made me feel much more prepared,’ she explains. ‘It was also lovely to see so many early-career researchers presenting at this meeting. The organisers had clearly made an effort to get a broad diversity of career stages represented.’
For prospective YSAS applicants next year, Trisha has two key pieces of advice. ‘First, don’t let selfdoubt deter you from trying. We are often our own worst critic, just give yourself a break and try to be confident in your abilities,’ she says. ‘Second, try not to overload your talk. It can be tempting to show off the vast amounts of work you’ve done, but I think the best thing you can do is tell a simple story and make it crystal clear.’
