Excellent Teaching Assistant Award 2024-25

Emily came to Hong Kong in 2019 after serving as a lecturer at the University of Dayton (USA). In her first role at HKU, she served as a curatorial designer for a public education collaboration between the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum and retail behemoth K11 Musea to improve public understanding of local insect ecologies. In her subsequent role, she co-developed the citizen science-based migratory butterfly tagging programme Danaid Butterfly Research Hong Kong. In this role, she was able to merge her passions for design and public inclusion in science with ecological research – organising the group’s outreach and education events throughout the project’s 3-year tenure. While handling thousands of butterflies for tagging, Emily became fascinated with the prospects of parasitism within migratory populations and decided to pursue a PhD to explore host-parasite interactions.

Emily is grateful to have demonstrated for a range of courses in the School of Biological Sciences (SBS), including lecture, lab, and field classes. However, her most rewarding experiences at HKU have occurred while working with student volunteers, research assistants, and mentees in the Global Change & Tropical Conservation Lab, as well as while helping students clarify their writing as a consultant in the CAES Writing Centre. In her interactions with students, she strives to employ the methods used by her favourite teachers – warmth, vulnerability, humility, and humour – to create an environment of inclusion, support, levity, and empowerment. Emily strongly believes that science belongs to everyone, and that public inclusion in science is crucial for maintaining trust and funding of scientific institutions, as well as for increasing the amount data available to answer ecological questions.

In addition to her teaching and mentorship activities, Emily savours the opportunity to organise knowledge exchange activities within SBS. She chaired the organisation of the two-day Ecology & Biodiversity Research Symposium in 2024, and she also serves on the Ecology & Biodiversity Seminar Series committee, which engages scientists from various backgrounds to share their research with HKU’s community to spur scientific discourse and collaboration.

Emily’s research examines parasite niche specialisation, virulence, and plant mediation of host-parasite interactions in Asian butterfly species. She is currently exploring how host plant chemistry influences the fitness and reproductive choices of parasitized butterflies. She has a BA in Sociology-Anthropology from Lewis & Clark College and an MSc in Biology from the University of Dayton (USA).