Join us in the beautiful north-east of England!
If you are interested in working with us, drop me a line at vivek.nityananda [at sign] newcastle.ac.uk and we can discuss possibilities.
CURRENT LAB MEMBERS
LAB TECHNICIAN
Adam Simmons: Adam has been an integral member of the lab from the beginning in 2019. He has successfully started a breeding program and has shouldered all the responsibilities for the maintenance and care of the mantises.
POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS
Sarah Scott: Sarah joined the lab in April 2025. She is funded by the Wild Animal Initiative on our project investigating wild bee welfare. Sarah completed her PhD at Ohio State University, USA and joined us after a Royal Society Newton fellowship at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Luigi Bacciadonna: Luigi joined the lab in November 2024. He is funded by the Leverhulme Trust on our collaboration with Prof Jennifer Richards investigating insect emotion. Luigi completed his PhD at Queen Mary University of London, UK and joined us after a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship at Sorbonne University, France.
PHD STUDENTS
Louie Yip: Louie joined the lab in September 2024. His project investigates active vision in bumblebees in collaboration with Opteran Technologies.
Co-SUPERVISED PHD STUDENTS
POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS
Reece Jones: Reece joined the lab in April 2025. His project investigates natural prey capture in praying mantises.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
PAST LAB MEMBERS
POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS
Balamurali GS: Balu joined the lab in September 2022. He was funded by the Leverhulme Trust on a project led by Prof Jennifer Richards (now at the University of Cambridge). The project spans literary studies, musicology, digital humanities and biology and is centred on a 17th century apiculture book by Charles Butler. Balu’s project investigates emotion-like states in bees. He completed his PhD at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram and joined us after postdoctoral research there and at Lund University. He is now an Associate Professor at Atria University, Bengaluru.
Théo Robert: Théo joined the lab in January 2020. He was funded by the BBSRC on our project investigating insect attention. Theo completed his PhD at the University of Exeter , UK and joined us after a JSPS fellowship at Tamagawa University, Japan. He is now a postdoctoral researcher with Mikko Juusola at Sheffield University.
PHD STUDENTS
Olga Procenko: Olga joined the lab in September 2020 with a Master’s from Queen Mary University of London. Her project investigated how affective states influence visual perception in bumblebees. She is now a postdoctoral researcher working with Carolina Rezaval at Birmingham University.
Co-SUPERVISED PHD STUDENTS
Matthew Quinn: Matthew was based at Durham University where he began his PhD research on visual processing in mosquito larvae in January 2021. The main supervisor on the project was Olena Riabinina, with Natalie Hempel de Ibarra (University of Exeter) and myself as co-supervisors.
POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS
Emiliano Kaselnik: Emiliano joined the lab from November 2023 to March 2024. He was visiting from Juliet Sztarker’s lab at the Universidade de Buenos Aires and was funded on a Marie Sklodowska Curie Action. His project looked at the role of stereopsis during mantis prey capture and attention.
Florian Wikforss: Florian joined the lab from January to May 2024. He was visiting from Stanley Heinze’s lab at Lund University. His project looked at motor motifs in praying mantises.
Filip Kubik: Filip joined the lab from January to June 2024. His project investigated the influence of competition on overconfidence.
Mariana Da Silva Malheiro: Mariana joined the lab from January to June 2024. Her project investigated the effect of stress on bee colour preferences. T
Hugo Le Lay : Hugo joined the lab from January to June 2024. His project investigated the effect of reward value on bumblebee attention.
Beth Green: Beth joined the lab in 2022 and returned to complete her MSci project in 2023. Her project investigated how stress influence behavioural flexibility in bees and the role that dopamine plays in their response to stress.
Miryam Revol: Miryam joined the lab from March to June 2023. Her project investigated the effect of pesticides on bumblebee attention and multi-tasking.
Mitsiou Grelot-Valade: Mitsiou joined the lab from March to June 2022. Her project investigated the effect of pesticides on bumblebee attention and multi-tasking.
Marin Nicolas: Marin joined the lab from March to June 2022. His project investigated the effect of reward value on bumblebee attention.
Skye Riddell: Skye joined the lab from January to June 2022. Her project investigate whether prey iridescence interfered with predation by praying mantises. This project was run in collaboration with John Sklehorn and Karin Kjernsmo.
Marion Callendret: Marion was in the lab from January to June 2021 on an Erasmus scholarship. Her project is investigating the influence of bottum-up cues on bumblebee visual attention.
Lucy Turner: Lucy joined the lab in February 2021. Her project investigated the influence of competition on overconfidence.
Vera Vinken, Kelsey Bezaire, Sol Lucas, Jack Hardman: Vera, Kelsey, Sol and Jack have all run rotation projects in the lab as part of their Leverhulme Behavioural Informatics PhD program. Their project was a collaboration with Prof Stephen McGough at the School of Computing comparing mechanisms of generalization between bumblebees and artificial neural networks.
Ruairidh Hinchcliffe: Ruairidh worked on a project with us from February to July 2020, investigating the influence of competition on overconfidence in anonymous virtual environments.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Abbie Aitchinson: Abbie joined the lab in January 2025. Her project looked at sustained attention for prey in praying mantises.
Darrach Dorman: Darrach joined the lab in January 2025. His project looked at influence of reward value on bumblebee visual behaviour.
Amy Bubb: Amy joined the lab in October 2024. Her project looked at influence of reward value on bumblebee visual behaviour.
Jamie Tulip: Jamie joined the lab in October 2024. Her project looked at influence of reward value on bumblebee visual behaviour.
Jay Daniels: Jay joined the lab in October 2024. His project looked at sustained attention for prey in praying mantises.
Emily Flett: Emily worked in the lab from September 2023 to August 2024 as a Psychology Placement student and summer student on several projects related to bee visual attention.
Will Hutson: Will worked in the lab from January to March 2024 . His project investigated the effect of stress on flower preferences in bumblebees.
Kate Scrutton: Kate joined the lab in January 2023, Her project investigate selective attention for prey in praying mantises.
Chloe Sowells: Chloe worked in the lab from January to March 2022. Her project investigated how bottom-up cuing affect bee visual discrimination.
Charlie Smith: Charlie worked in the lab from September 2021 to March 2022. His project investigated how choice of task affects overconfidence in the task.
Karolina Tarapata: Karolina worked in the lab from September 2020 to March 2021. Her project investigated how learning influences visual attention in bumblebees.
Tan Yi Ting: Yi Ting worked with us for her undergraduate project investigating selective spatial attention in mantises from January to April 2020.
Edward Hayden: Ed did his undergraduate project in the lab from September 2019 to January 2020 investigating how interest in and perceived career importance of a skill influenced overconfidence in that skill .
Sin Yap: Sin Yap joined us from Newcastle University’s Malaysia campus. Her project investigated the correspondence problem and mantis 3D vision fromJune to August 2019.
Yi-Jie Loh: Yi-Jie Loh also joined us from Newcastle University’s Malaysia campus. Her project investigated selective spatial attention in mantises from June to August 2019.
Vivek Nityananda 