Feather detective Inka wins Three Minute Thesis contest

“To a seabird physiologist, a feather represents a treasure trove of biological data,” says Inka Pleiss, a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences.

“Hormones extracted from feathers tell us about the stress levels of a bird, stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen tell us where a bird was feeding and on what, and feather colour can even tell us about the availability of food.”

That was the start of her winning talk in the University’s Three Minute Thesis competition, which requires doctoral students to distil the essence of their research into a snappy presentation.

Pleiss hopes using feathers and blood samples to study the native sooty shearwater or tītī will help in gauging how the birds will adapt to climate change.

She will compete in the Asia-Pacific 3MT Virtual Competition (run by the University of Queensland) and the U21 3MT Virtual Competition.

The 2024 runner-up was Isurie Akarawita (Faculty of Engineering) for Smart
Chewing Robots, and the People’s Choice Award went to Logan Ritchie (Auckland Bioengineering Institute) for Percolation and Stretchy Conductors – the Role of Structure. 

Videos of all the finalists are here.