Dr Elena Cini joins the iDeer team!

I’m Elena, the new Post-Doctoral Research Officer at Bangor University working on the iDeer project. My role will be to ensure the co-design of the iDeer Tool. From the start of the project, I will engage with stakeholders and investigate their perceptions toward deer and help to identify what features the iDeer Tool should have to support users in designing land management plans that help mitigate against negative deer impacts.

I was very lucky to be involved in an exciting, multi-disciplinary PhD at the University of Reading, working within the Horizon EU-funded PoshBee project; I performed extensive large- and small-scale fieldwork with bees to investigate the impact of landscape, pesticides, and pathogens on their health, and at the same time, I created a questionnaire for beekeepers to explore how a new omics tool may help halt bee declines and improve their health. Therefore, in addition to my ecology background, I also have experience in conservation social science, which I cannot wait to put to use for iDeer!

Since I finished my PhD last year, this is a fresh start for me as a postdoc and I am super excited to be involved in this project. I am looking forward to this new experience, and I am confident it will turn into an amazing adventure!