Mr Matthew Faith

I am a PhD candidate working in the Plankton and Policy Research Group. My work focuses on using plankton time-series datasets, such as the Continuous Plankton Recorder, to inform policy on the status of the marine environment. I am particularly interested in the effects of climate change and ocean acidification, alongside direct human pressures (such as fishing pressure and nutrient input), on plankton community structure and what impacts this may have on key ecosystem services (including fish stocks and carbon sequestration). 

I have worked with a variety of methods to detect and characterize different types of plankton taxa, this has included satellite ocean color, pigment analysis, microscopy (light and electron), flowcytometry, and molecular (both DNA and RNA) detection. My current research focus is on applying machine learning algorithms to a variety of these detection methods, in the form of time-series, to project how plankton communities will likely change in the future. 

I worked as a Research Assistant for the EU project EMERTOX, focusing on the detection of Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) species in Spain and Portugal. My work explored new methods for the filtration and detection of the organisms, such as electrochemical genetic methods. 

I worked in the Marine Litter Detection team for a European Space Agency project, applying machine learning techniques to remote sensing satellite imagery for the detection of floating marine litter in the Black Sea. 

This project explored the use of eDNA for analyzing the structure of phytoplankton communities, in comparison to widely-used microscopy techniques.