photo of savanna

Science

Ms Savanna van Mesdag

Weed Ecologist - Plant Ecologist

Protecting Crops and the Environment

PUBLICATIONS
Location
Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, AL5 2JQ
Email
savanna.van-mesdag@rothamsted.ac.uk
Professional Platforms
LinkedIn
ORCID
ResearchGate
Google Scholar
GitHub

Biography

Savanna van Mesdag has recently started as a Plant Ecologist at Rothamsted Research, in the Strategic Area: Protecting Crops and the Environment. Through her previous research for her PhD thesis, she has experience in, for example, plant species identification, plant community research, statistical analyses in R and spatial analyses in QGIS. Savanna is extremely interested in answering questions about plant species and communities on anthropogenically influenced and modified habitats, such as arable land. She intends to answer such questions by collating and formatting large amounts of weed data from previous research, as well as collecting data through fieldwork, She then plans to statistically analyse the data to develop further knowledge and understanding about wild plant (weed) communities on arable land.

Awards

  • BSc in Animal Biology at Edinburgh Napier University
  • MSc in Taxonomy and Biodiversity at Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum - passed with Distinction
  • PhD at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences - viva passed, thesis being completed

Measures of Esteem

Wildlife on Brownfields Conference June 2022 - Helped to organise a conference in June 2022, with members of the Glasgow Natural History Society, which was part of the Glasgow Science Festival Programme of that year. Invited most of the speakers to give talks and/or present posters on the day and provided a 20 minute talk on my relevant research thus far.

Taylor & Francis Award for the Best Student Article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology - Savanna was awarded second place for this international Journal award for her 2020 first-author article.

Edinburgh Napier Best Student Volunteer 2017 - awarded in recognition of her dedicated volunteer work during her time as an undergraduate student.