As Head of Postgraduate Studies I am responsible for the ensuring that the NHM provides a robust training environment and excellent supervision for its PhD students. Our PhD students are registered at a range of universities in the UK and elsewhere, spending varying amounts of time in the NHM depending on their projects. I also represent the NHM on various management boards for those doctoral training partnerships in which the NHM is a formal partner.

My research focused on raphid diatoms, including the investigation of cell wall development and its susceptibility to environmental conditions, intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting wall morphology, the transformation of wall characters within and across higher taxa, discovering evolutionary relationships and reflecting those in diatom classification, the use of cytoplasmic features for diatom taxonomy, and understanding and describing diatom diversity in aquatic ecosystems, particularly in the light of their use as environmental indicators. I have used experimental culture techniques to test growth responses and ecological “preferences”, and to determine the extent of phenotypic variability within clones, to improve ecological inferences, with clear relevance to issues of environmental and climate change. Being able to grow diatoms in culture is essential to studies of their wall development and understanding character homologies and transformations. This in turn underpins the development and use of descriptive terminology for diatoms which is essential to clear communication between systematists and for comparative phylogenetic studies. I now head an international initiative to produce a new comprehensive guide to diatom structure and terminology.Alongside establishing the different modes of wall development is an interest in how the cell modulates morphogenesis. While wall structure is clearly under genetic control, the question remains as to what extent the cell actively modulates structure using cytoplasmic components, versus exploiting physical processes and intrinsic properties of silica, particularly for the finest structures. The use of confocal laser scanning microscopy offers a route to exploring the role of the cytoskeleton in wall formation, particularly for larger diatoms that exhibit more unusual features.