Profile

I am a Biologist living in Cardiff. My main research focus on ecological, environmental and ecological issues. In my free time I love to go bouldering or do aerial trapeze. In my opinion these sports are great as they are great exercise but also fun and social sports. From the age of only 5 I have also been taking dance classes  and since then have taken part in classes of varying styles, ballet, tap, jazz, American high kick, Irish and so on. I am also a keen runner and have participated in half marathon runs. Sport is not the only thing important to me, I am a keen cook and baker! I love experimenting with food to make delicious meals for friends and family

My name is Alex King, I’m from Hereford and I currently live in Cardiff. Let me tell you a little about how I got to where I am today: I am 28 years old and graduated with a Biology sandwich degree from Cardiff University back in 2016. After graduating I was offered a job at Bristol Zoo where I had completed my placement year with university. Here, I was given the responsibility of managing volunteers and engaging them with work. I was working with the crayfish breeding and release programme here at the zoo. White-clawed crayfish are endangered and at the zoo there is a special programme to breed them and release them back into the wild to increase there numbers. I Attended a conference in Finland with the Zoo and through networking met my next future employer, a university in Switzerland. I worked on a very wide range of topics and gained many skills here over the three years as a lab assistant. I was trusted with running and leading my own research projects (the main one being a huge nationwide environmental DNA, DNA project), I participated in teaching student practical lessons and experiments and helped produced master level lessons for lecturers. I carried out other research in environmental genetics, toxicology and microplastics. My research here also allowed me to write up in various scientific publications.

I wake up have breakfast and then cycle to work to arrive at 8:30. Here, I carry out field work, lab work or I analyse data we have produced and write our studies into papers to publish in journals. I return home from work at 5. During field work season (from April until October) I often wake up very early to begin the day. My colleague and I then travel to various waterbodies (lakes, rivers, stream or ponds) to collect water samples to test for environmental DNA. In water samples it is possible to detect species which live there or have lived there in the past. It is a tiring day but very rewarding and it is great fun to be outdoors. We then return to the Uni with the water samples. These samples will be used at a later date and tested for species occurrence. eDNA must first be extracted from the samples and then we use a special lab technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to visualise whether the DNA of certain species are present in the water where we collected the samples. I return home from work at 5.