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Two RSB Future Fellow Awards
Two RSB members have been awarded Future Fellowships:
Ajay Narendra (Zeil Lab, EEG),
Project Summary
Ensuring optimal information processing at the limits of size and ambient light is a challenge for technical systems, but has been elegantly solved by animals. The challenge of navigation is similar for animals of all sizes and in both day and night. This project aims to conduct a comparative analysis to identify the consequence of size and light on the information processing capacities for visual navigation. Outcomes of this project will reveal the behavioural and physiological adaptations needed and the costs associated with navigating in the dimmest of habitats and at the smallest of sizes. Identifying such optimal biological solutions for robust navigation will be relevant for image processing, computer vision and robotics.
(FT140100221, 2014-2018, administered by ANU, $770K).
Guillaume Tcherkez (currently at Université Paris-Sud, France, to join RSB PS in January 2015).
Project Summary
eaf respiration-related metabolism in terrestrial vegetation liberates considerable amounts of carbon dioxide, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide into the atmosphere. Such gaseous losses are detrimental to biomass production but respiration also sustains nutrient assimilation and biosyntheses. This project aims to describe flux patterns in respiratory metabolism and disentangle interactions with other pathways such as photorespiration and nitrogen assimilation. It will exploit stable isotopes to quantify metabolic partitioning and show coordination between major processes. It will establish key mechanisms by which respiration dictates plant carbon balance and contributes to identifying metabolic bottle-necks in plant primary production.
(FT140100645, 2014-2018, administered by ANU, $865K).
