Agriculture, Health and Environment Department

Dr Stefania Cerretelli obtained the Bachelor Degree in Natural Science, and the Master Degree in Environmental Biology at the University of Trieste (Italy) in the 2010 and 2013, respectively. During her Master’s and Bachelor’s Degrees she developed experience in planning and conducting environmental surveys (such as vegetation surveys as well as mammals monitoring).

She obtained a PhD in Ecology at the University of Udine (Italy) and The Hames Hutton Institute (UK) with the title “The role of ecosystem services in the spatial assessment of land degradation: a transdisciplinary study in the Ethiopian Great Rift Valley”. Her PhD was part of the ALTER (Alternative Carbon Investments in Ecosystems for Poverty Alleviation) project, a three years international and interdisciplinary project funded by ESPA (Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation) with partners from UK, Ethiopia, and Uganda.

For her PhD, she mapped the landscape capacity to supply ecosystem services (carbon storage, soil retention, and nutrient retention) integrating data from global datasets, as well as soil properties data from a local survey, and a supervised land use classification. Moreover, she developed and implemented a participatory approach (through single interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory mapping) that involved local stakeholders. The spatial data and the local participatory knowledge and information were finally integrated in a spatialised Bayesian Belief Network model to map land degradation risk in several land use scenarios.

She joined the Natural Resources Institute in July 2019 as a research fellow for the project “Sustainability-Intensification Trade-offs in Coffee Agroforestry in Central America”, to work on ecosystem services modelling through GIS techniques. She also worked and still work identifying relationship and trade-offs between productivity and biophysical aspects (e.g. soil characteristics, shade management, biodiversity). She became Senior Lecturer in April 2023 and she is involved in teaching, tutoring and supervising activities for the BSc on Environmental Science and the MSc programmes Global Environmental Change and Agriculture for Sustainable Development.

Since the end of 2023 she is involved in the project “Evaluating the interrelated impacts of commodity agriculture, market access and forest conservation on food security in tropical landscape” where conservation efforts, markets access and commodity agriculture are analysed to infer how they affect rural livelihoods and poverty.

Throughout her career, Dr Stefania Cerretelli gained good knowledge of and experience on Remote Sensing techniques and GIS-based systems (e.g. GRASS, QGIS, and ArcGIS), programming and statistical analysis skills including BBN statistics (mainly using R-Cran Software), good skills in managing large sets of data.

During her academic career she worked with important academics in her own field: Jeremy Haggar, Truly Santika, Alessandro Gimona, Laura Poggio, Helaina Black, Rolando Cerda

Steven joined the Chemical Ecology research group as a research fellow within the Natural Resources Institute in 2017. Since then, he has worked on numerous interdisciplinary projects investigating semiochemicals for use in integrated pest management and improving pollination services. Recently Steven has also moved into biopesticide research, such as entomopathogenic fungi, using his natural product expertise to identify and isolate bioactive metabolites. All areas of his research are focused on attempting to reduce reliance on traditional agrochemical interventions and thus make agriculture more sustainable.

This interest was informed by his experience working  as a Natural Product Chemist for 5 years at the small biotech firm Hypha Discovery (https://www.hyphadiscovery.com/), where he was responsible for isolating novel bioactive metabolites from bacterial and fungal strains as part of a drug discovery methodology. 

Over the years Steven has worked closely with the Royal Society of Chemistry and currently sits on both the Kent local section and the agriculture special interest group committees, organising events and STEM outreach activities.

Steven started his career when he received his BSc in Chemistry with mathematics from Keele University in 2007. He followed this by working as an analytical chemist at both Clariant and Sanofi Aventis and was responsible for the quality control analysis for fine pharmaceuticals produced on site.

Steven subsequently started working on utilising small molecule inhibitors of Spliceosomal protein Snu114 at the University of Manchester, under Dr David Berrisford, for which he was received a PhD in biochemistry. 

I started at the university in January 2024 as a post-doctoral research fellow in the RodTickPathMan One Health project. The project investigates the link between grey squirrels, an invasive species in the UK, ticks and Lyme’s disease. I will focus on estimating the abundances of squirrels and other tick carriers using a range of field survey techniques but primarily camera traps.

Prior to this position, I completed my PhD at the University of Aberdeen (2018-2023) supervised by Prof Xavier Lambin (UoA), Dr Thomas Cornulier (Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS)), Dr Nicholas Schurch (BioSS), Dr Philip Whitfield (Natural Research Ltd.) and Tom Dearnley (Forestry England). The project assessed the impact of persecution on the population dynamics of goshawks, a forest specialist bird of prey in the UK. I used a range of methods to do this, including field and laboratory work as well as complex statistical methods such as GAMMs and capture-mark-recapture models in a Bayesian framework. Additionally, I delved into the AI world and trained computer vision models to process and label the camera trap images I collected.

In addition to demonstrating on a range of practical and statistical courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate taught levels, I have also managed and lectured a final year undergraduate course titled Wildlife Conservation and Management. This included setting and marking written reports and presentations. I have also co-supervised honours and master’s level students.

In addition to traditional teaching, I have been heavily involved in groups which promote peer learning and development. In particular, I helped to run and hosted sessions with the Aberdeen Study Group who aim to promote knowledge exchange in a friendly setting, focussing primarily on statistics and coding.  

Dr Lauren Farwell joined NRI as a Postdoctoral Researcher in 2024. Her work focuses on investigating the ecology and diversity of plant pathogens, using novel monitoring and diagnostic techniques in the field and researching sustainable management strategies against such pathogens. Lauren is a member of NRI’s Agriculture, Health and Environment Department, working in the Plant Health and Postharvest Science research themes.

Before joining NRI, Lauren was a PhD student with Cranfield University in the Applied Mycology department, and was based at the Pest and Pathogen Ecology department at NIAB East Malling. While based at NIAB East Malling for four years, Lauren researched the epidemiology of Cladosporium on raspberry using sequencing to determine species present, field screens to determine fruit susceptibility, metabarcoding to assess the epicarp microbiome and performed field assays of biological control agents and resistant varieties to determine their efficacy. During her time at NIAB East Malling, Lauren also worked as a research technician, working on pathology and bio-stimulant experiments across various horticultural crops.

Lauren holds a BSc in Plant Science (University of Bristol) and a PhD on the epidemiology and management of Cladosporium on raspberry (Cranfield University in partnership with NIAB East Malling).

Lauren’s expertise includes pathogenicity assays, DNA barcoding, amplicon sequencing, biological control agent assays, airborne spore sampling and detection and the development of diagnostic assays.  

John has over thirty years of experience working as an analytical chemist, primarily within UKAS 17025 accredited laboratories. He has worked within the food enforcement sector analysing samples submitted by bodies such as Trading Standards and Port Health Authorities. He has spent five years establishing and developing a quality control/research laboratory for a successful private company within the global beer industry before moving to the Natural Resources Institute in September 2024.

In addition to food analysis experience, John brings knowledge from other sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals (specifically cannabis) and forensic explosives.

He is fully conversant with traditional wet chemistry techniques and the latest analytical instrumentation, using both to generate accredited analytical methods of analysis.