We bring together over 50 person-years of experience in education and research, the latter with core concepts rooted in peer-reviewed science.
Our skill sets are primarily directed towards aquatic plankton ecology, but we also have outputs in fields relating to microalgal biotechnology, governance, and terrestrial ecology.
We have delivered products as diverse as decision-support tools to government agencies through to EU-funded education materials on ocean and water literacy and research.
Responsibilities
Aditee Mitra: plankton research and allied management aspects; simulator development, documentation and visualisation; ocean and water literacy; reviews, analysis, and reporting.
Kevin J Flynn: plankton ecophysiology research; biotechnology applications; simulator development, documentation and visualisation; ocean and water literacy; reviews, analysis, and reporting.
Rohan Mitra-Flynn: product testing and visualisation, website development and maintenance.
More details
The work of Aditee Mitra builds on a career ranging from botany, ecosystems analysis and governance, to marine ecosystem dynamics, and includes experience as Managing Editor for the Journal of Plankton Research, climate change research consultant, biodiversity officer, and media fellowship with BBC Countryfile. Aditee has been a key driver of the mixoplankton-centric paradigm in marine ecology, rewriting over 100 years of understanding of marine ecology and leading to the Scientific American article ‘The Perfect Beast’ (March 2018), subsequently identified as one of ‘13 discoveries that could change everything’. Her contributions to the United Nations Global Compact’s Plankton Manifesto (2024) recognises mixoplankton as important drivers and lynchpins of marine ecology. Aditee chairs the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) working group on mixoplankton (MixONET). Much of Aditee’s work, beyond simulation modelling of mixoplankton and zooplankton ecology, targets translating such research findings into policy-setting and management arenas and also updating education in marine science through various projects as a member of the UKYA, under the auspices of the Royal Society.
More information and publications can be found at https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5572-9331 and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aditee-Mitra
The work of Kevin J Flynn exploits over 4 decades of research, encompassing empirical studies of microalgal ecophysiology (especially N-physiology and osmo-mixotrophy), Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) physiology, microalgal biotechnology (especially associated with growth dynamics and stoichiometry), plankton – ocean acidification, and plankton predator-prey systems. From the mid 1990’s he has also developed system dynamics (cybernetic) descriptions of plankton ecophysiology. These have included as subjects viruses, bacteria, microalgae (phytoplankton, mixoplankton), protist and metazoan zooplankton. Applications of those models have included microalgal biotechnology (especially biofuels and biomass, including nutrient recovery), HABs, predator-prey dynamics, virus-host dynamics, temperature and ocean acidification interactions. Since the 2010’s, Kevin has worked on a new concept in cybernetics modelling; originally for application to photo-osmo-mixotrophic microalgal growth in biotechnology, the platform has since been developed for bacteria, mixoplankton and zooplankton. He has also written a teach-yourself book on ‘Dynamic Ecology – an introduction to the art of simulating trophic dynamics’, and a series of products for the EU-funded Probleu ocean and water literacy programme.
More information and publications can be found at https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6913-5884 and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin-Flynn-8 .