Alexander Dhond
Funnily enough, I actually entered undergraduate as a pre-medical student! In my third year of university, however, I was fortunate enough to embark on an internship on bamboo agroforestry in Ecuador. While I was there, I learned about sustainable agriculture and the use of regenerative crops like bamboo in construction and architecture, and I was inspired by the use of plants as a nature-based solution to societal problems. When I returned, I promptly changed my degree and began working as a research assistant in an agroecology lab on campus, where I became interested in understanding how humans were affecting the environment through climate and anthropogenic pressures.
I then went on to complete an MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation from Imperial College London, where I studied the effects of land-use change on insect biodiversity in the Neotropics. Following my degree, I was keen to gain real-world research experience in the biodiversity and conservation space, so I joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where I have led two research projects, one focusing on computational approaches to aquatic toxicology assessment, and one focusing on better understanding the ecosystem services of coastal wetlands.
These varied experiences have led me to pursue my DPhil at the University of Oxford, where I hope to combine my knowledge to better understand how net environmental outcome instruments can contribute to wetland restoration and recovery.
My DPhil will explore stressors causing wetland loss in the US and UK and how net environmental outcome policies (No Net Loss, Biodiversity Net Gain, Nutrient Neutrality, etc) can improve wetland restoration and conservation outcomes. I will combine field data collection of biological and chemical wetland characteristics at UK sites with data synthesis approaches for thousands of wetland restoration projects in the US to link development stressors, restoration outcomes, and characteristics of project policies that led to successful wetland outcomes.
