Staff Profile

I work as an Insect Technician for NUBI, based in a specialist facility on the 5th floor of the Ridley Building. I take care of and breed praying mantises and locusts, yielding healthy specimens which are used by research staff and students. Much of the research focuses on insect vision, including the "Man, Mantis and Machine" (M3) project headed by Professor Jenny Read. And research into insect attention in collaboration with Dr Vivek Nityananda. 

I have also worked as a Research Assistant for the M3 project, studying stereoscopic vision of the praying mantis. This involved attaching tiny glasses to their heads (just like on my t-shirt) and recording and analysing their responses to a variety of visual stimuli.

• Nityananda V, Tarawneh G, Henriksen S, Umeton D, Simmons A, Read JCA. A Novel Form of Stereo Vision in the Praying Mantis. Current Biology 2018, 28(4), 588-593.
• Nityananda V, O'Keeffe J, Umeton D, Simmons A, Read JCA. Second-order cues to figure motion enable object detection during prey capture by praying mantises. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2019, 116(52), 27018-27027.