Biography

 

Julia Weiss

Julia Weiss

  • Scholar-elect
  • United States
  • 2024 PhD Plant Sciences

Our planet is undergoing simultaneous transformations, with climate change, habitat degradation, pollution, invasive species, disease, and overexploitation posing significant threats to the environment. To truly grasp the impact of these pressures on species, it is essential to delve into their long-term implications and understand how they synergistically interact and cascade within an ecosystem. These are questions that have fascinated me since my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan. My research in India, where I collaborated with Professor Trevor Price at the University of Chicago, examined the effects of land use change on avian communities and morphology. During my master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh, I studied a different environmental stressor - microplastic pollution. I investigated its interplay with water temperature, aiming to understand how warmer oceans might influence microplastic uptake in sponges. At Cambridge, I will pursue a PhD in Plant Sciences under Professor David Edwards. I will be studying avian communities in Borneo to unravel temporal changes within logged and pristine forests and assess how climate change might exacerbate the impacts of land degradation.

Previous Education

The University of Edinburgh Marine Systems and Policies 2021
University of Michigan Ecology Evolution Biodiversity 2019