EmProf Justin Marshall
Justin Marshall has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of both sensory neuroscience and ecology. He is now retired.
A/Prof. Karen Cheney
Karen is a Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences. She is interested in fish vision, the evolution and function of colour patterns, and conducts behavioural experiments to examine visual perception.
Dr. Fabio Cortesi
Fabio is a fish fanatic. He is leading the charge into two areas; visual ecology and evolution of colour vision in reef fish. He uses cutting edge transcriptomics and hand-nets and buckets in his work.
Dr. Wen-Sung Chung
Wen-Sung is interested in cephalopod. His current research describes and explain the new retinal design elements, and undertakes behavioural observations on both shallow and deep-living species, large and small.
Dr. Samuel Powell
Samuel works on applying what we learn about marine vision to engineering applications. His interests lie in optical sensors, imaging, and their applications.
PhD Students
Valerio Tettamanti
Valerio is developing new methodologies to investigate the visual system and the colouration of damselfish using genetic engineering techniques (CRISPR-Cas9) and single cell RNA sequencing.
Judy Wang
Ching-Wen is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof Justin Marshall and Wen-Sung Chung focussing on Stomatopod vision.
Abigail Shaughnessy
Abigail is investigating the ability of coral reef fishes to plastically change their visual system to both long-term predictable and more stochastic changes in their light habitat.
Carl Santiago
Carl is looking at why anemonefishes – which are usually quite territorial – are occasionally observed to share their host anemones with other species (cohabitation), notably leading to hybridization.
Stephanie Heyworth
Stephanie is researching the visual systems of seahorses, specifically within the Hippocampus genus. She aims to leverage her findings from retinal genetics to aid conservation efforts.
Jasper Stead
Jasper is interested in understanding why and how different regions of the fish’s brain have evolved, and how these changes are influenced by their environment and lifestyles.
Claire Moad
Claire’s PhD research is focused on investigating how marine animal colour patterns are perceived by reef fish.
Rowan Carew
Rowan is passionate about tying in biology, ecology and conservation into behaviour and visual capabilities of Syngnathids (seahorses, pipefish and seadragons).
Honour Students
Torin O’Connell
Torin is investigating the ability of female, blue-lined octopus to distinguish their own offspring from other’s and to discriminate any unhealthy offspring. He hopes to help understand the function of their brain post-reproduction.
Shoshannah Fogarty
Shoshannah has been an intern at our lab for two years. She is now undertaking a research project looking at the lateralization of Stigmatoteuthis hoyleii brain and eyes compared to coastal squid.
sensoryecologyuq.com 