Lee

Bardon

I completed my Master’s in Computational Geophysics at University College London in 2018. For several years thereafter, I ran a plant-based food business in London, and enjoyed developing a wide range of new skill sets. However, the COVID lockdowns brought ample opportunity for self-reflection, and the realisation that I deeply missed the intellectual challenge of science. This led me to obtaining a day job as a software engineer, a ‘moonlighting’ research opportunity with oceanographers at Southampton University and MIT, and, ultimately, to my current position as a PhD student.

From the broadest perspective, I’m interested in the origin and evolution of complex, highly-coupled systems, and in using hybrid computational and statistical methods to model them. To my mind, one of the most compelling examples of such complexity is represented by marine microbial ecosystems. They affect ocean physics, chemistry and biology across multiple scales, and play a significant role in the regulation of Earth’s climate. Yet, they are challenging to sample and study, and much remains unknown about their global diversity and distribution. Working as part of Dr Emily Zakem’s group, I aim to help better understand these dynamic
microbial communities, and shed some light on how they might respond to rapid and ongoing environmental change.