Chris Hirst

PhD student in Genetics and Genomics

I am a first year PhD student under the E4 NERC DTP. I will be performing an assessment of diet, gut microbiome, and plant detoxification in roe deer as a tool for deer and forest management with my supervisors, Dr Silvia Perez-Espona and Prof Richard Ennos (University of Edinburgh), Dr Robin Gill (CASE – Forest Research) and Prof Rory Putman (CASE- British Deer Society).

Previously, I studied Animal Biology (BSc Hons) at Nottingham Trent University before moving on to a MRes in Ecology and Environmental Biology at the University of Glasgow. There, I was lucky enough to stay at the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment and study how chronic stress effected the immune response to gastrointestinal parasites in park fallow deer with Dr Simon Babayan and Prof Rory Putman. 

My core research interests are in using genomic and molecular biology technologies to investigate the health and ecophysiology of wild ungulates.