Spotlight: CAPIM students

Zhuyun Gu is a PhD student with a focus on land contamination, soil chemistry, and risk assessment. Her project involves investigating the behaviour of platinum group elements (PGE) in soil and their translocation, bioavailability, and toxicity to plants. The aim is to model the interaction between anthropogenic PGE and soil and plants and provide critical information for evaluating the risk of the platinum group to the environment.

Zhuyun says “when I was young, I used to like watching nature documentaries to observe how plants evolved themselves to tackle the difficulties of living in some of the toughest environments. That is probably why I chose this particular field. Soil, plants, and their interactions are extremely complicated, with many unanswered mysteries. Therefore, I truly enjoy working on my project in that I am unwrapping a tiny piece of mystery, and maybe this discovery will benefit plants and soil as well as human beings who live close to soil and plants.”.

Congratulations to the following CAPIM students on their thesis submissions:

• Jordan McCarthy – “Using indigenous terrestrial micro-invertebrates to assess environmental impacts of soil pollution in Antarctica”.
• Paul Chen – “The impact of glitter, as a type of microplastic, on the springtail (Folsomia candida)”.