I study how people understand other people’s everyday actions. for example, if you see your Mum pour water from the kettle into the teapot, you know she is making tea. But how do you know that? What does your brain do to let you understand how another person makes tea? This might seem like a funny thing to research, but understanding actions is a very basic part of human social interaction, and social interaction is important to everything we do as humans. Studying action understanding will help us teach children who find it hard, for example, children with autism.
I research how we can use genetic modifications (introducing new genes) to make crop plants resistant to attack from nematodes, which are little worms that burrow into plant roots and damage the plant. My current project is to taking a gene from maize and putting it into a type of banana called plantain so that nematodes that attack the plantain roots aren’t able to digest the root.
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