Assoc ProfessorTom Wilkinson

I graduated from the University of Wales, Bangor in 1989 and worked for 12 months at the Grassland Research Institute in Berkshire, UK. I started my PhD in the Department of Zoology, Unversity of Oxford in 1990 and graduated in 1993 before beginning a research career at the University of York. After a couple more post docs in Tokyo, Japan and Birmingham, UK, I joined the staff of the then Zoology Department at UCD in 2002. I have always been interested in entomology and my work has focussed on one group of insects, the aphids, which are on the one hand fascinating, in terms of their life histories and reproductive strategies, and on the other economically important because of the damage they inflict in agriculture. Working with plant-feeding insects bridges the gap between the traditional views of Zoology and Botany and as such my research group (Insect Ecophysiology) has expertise in aphid nutrition and feeding and plant responses to aphid damage.