I am a year in industry student from the University of York working within Neil Hall’s Group. Supervised by Rowena Hill and Mark McMullan, my project aims to explore the evolution of lifestyle within the fungal lineage Gaeumannomyces, a genus including pathogens such as Gaeumannomyces tritici (causing wheat take-all disease) and other less characterised mutualistic and antagonistic species. 

Using phylogenetic analysis, comparative genomics and pathogenicity tests, I am interested in exploring the phylogeny of Gaeumannomyces, calculating divergence time estimation and looking for genomic regions that may underpin different lifestyles.

Prior to this year, I attended Gatsby Plant Science Summer School and completed an internship at the environmental organisation 'How the Earth Thinks' where I developed an interest in the rhizosphere, plant-fungal interactions and sustainable agriculture.

Additionally, I am part of the Youth Panel for the British Dragonfly Society where I enjoy attending field trips, science communication and helping young people feel represented within nature conservation.

Will is a synthetic biologist with expertise in yeast and plant engineering. His research focuses on developing technologies to accelerate plant genetic engineering and functional studies.

Will earned his PhD at Imperial College London with Prof. Tom Ellis, where he pioneered new genome engineering approaches to study yeast signalling pathways. Building on this foundational work, he then expanded into biosensing and synthetic multicellularity.

Supported by an EMBO Fellowship, Will carried out postdoctoral research at Boston University with Prof. Mo Khalil and Prof. Mary Gehring (MIT), where he transitioned into plant synthetic biology, developing new methods and technologies for precision plant transgenesis and genome editing.

At the Earlham Institute, under the mentorship of Dr Conrad Nieduszynski, his work focuses on rewriting plant chromosomes to decode genome function, with the long-term goal of engineering more resilient and productive crops.