 Hi, my name is Jason Hamer. I'm a PhD student and postgraduate representative in the School of Plant Biology. During my undergraduate, I studied environmental biology with a strong focus in botany. From then, I moved straight into my honours where I studied flammability and straight from my honours into a PhD here at UWA. My PhD is assessing the vulnerability of eucalyptus species to a changing climate here in the south-west Australian biodiversity hotspot. This involves a wide range of research, including ecology, ecophysiology. I study plant-functional traits and I also do some statistical and mechanistic modelling. At the moment, I'm trying to define the bounds of species distributions and I'm getting some pretty interesting results looking at root architecture. I chose to do my PhD at UWA because it's a research intensive school and has a great research culture. It also suits my research because it's in the middle of a biodiversity hotspot, which is a really great place to be for botanists. The facilities here at UWA are great and being a research intensive school, if there's anything we don't have and we need, it's easy enough to get in. There are plenty of opportunities to get involved with a student life even during your research. Personally, I have my hands full at the moment as a postgraduate representative, as well as organising a volunteering hub to connect undergraduate students to PhD students in their projects. I don't really have a dream job per se. At the moment, I'm just trying to keep all my doors open to see what opportunities come along.