Dr Odette Ay Ling Paramor
Associate Professor of Marine Biology
In the PMB Building, you will meet a smiling, good-natured woman graciously carries a reusable bag and carries coffee in her own recycle cup. Her office is decorated with marine creatures and animal models. Coming to her office is like stepping into a forest and the bottom of the sea. Her office door is always open to students and colleagues. She loves earth, loves nature, and advocates environmental protection. She is Dr Odette Ay Ling Paramor, Head of the School of Geographical Sciences.
Odette chose marine biology because it sounded cool and has followed a career path largely based on what she enjoys doing.
After she first graduated from Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) she worked in national radio for a year before being invited back to QMUL for a PhD. Her PhD was sponsored by Defra (a UK government ministry) to investigate the UK’s first example of a ‘managed realignment’ site which was then a new method of coastal flood defence and she spent a few years strapped into a pair of chest waders digging up mud and worms looking at how to restore saltmarshes. As an ecologist, she has always been interested in how science can be applied in management so this suited her very well. After that, she moved on to more research-to-support-policy type work and ended up working on and leading projects investigating how to develop and introduce ecosystem approaches to management in marine systems, particularly in fisheries management. She ended up working on some large international projects with an excellent team of colleagues based across Europe, North America and West Africa in universities, research labs and governments and learnt about how science and policy is done internationally.
Odette has more than 10 years of teaching experience at UNNC and is a highly regarded teacher among her students. She has really enjoyed being able to work with such an excellent group of smart, and highly collegial people in her school and said that she regards it as a privilege to teach the environmental sciences students as they are such an amazing group of people and that it is very exciting to see how well the graduates do in the job market where they in demand as there are not many environmental scientists in China and this market is only going to grow.
She was invited to join several international research consortia not long after she arrived at UNNC who were focused on supporting EU-China research and innovation as she is one of the very few people based in China who has experience of leading and coordinating European Framework projects so has an understanding of both Chinese and European research and innovation funding mechanisms. This meant that she has diversified her research areas and has spent most of her time in recent years looking at areas such as agriculture, urbanisation, freshwater resources and how to improve EU-China cooperation between research institutes and small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working in these areas. She has also supervised some excellent PhD students working on marine anti-fouling surfaces, eco-tourism and international marine governance with colleagues from across the university and DTP partner the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resource Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Odette is a very kind, devoted and knowledgeable teacher. She not only provided very good ecology and environmental change courses to UNNC students, but also well organized many career workshops, invited lectures, fieldworks which helped to broaden student horizons before their start of career. She always provided a lot of help to students who wish to take one step forward after graduation, for example providing very useful career suggestions, recommending them to top universities for Masters studies, helping them to build contact with alumni. This all really helps our students, also including me. We had very good contact even after I was graduating from UNNC and nearly each year I will pay a short visit to her. Wish her all the best in Ningbo!
---- Yunke PENG，2018 Graduate in Ens 2+2 programme. PhD candidate in Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich. Research interests in global carbon and nitrogen cycling from terrestrial ecosystem
As a teacher, Odette always has great enthusiasm for the course and the students. As a department head, she actively coordinates the relationship between students and tutors, and always puts students and course in the first place. She has an excellent understanding of professional knowledge, and can always teach us a lot of valuable experience, which could not be simply obtained from books, based on her substantial research experience. She is so smart and enthusiastic. Everything she has done for students goes far beyond what a teacher should do. As my personal experience, she is always willing to offer her help answering all my questions, even if it is not within her working hours. In our group, she keeps following some leading-edge project opportunities and related academic papers for us alumni. She has a lot of interest in environmental projects in China and has also made a lot of contributions to them. I love her very much and hope she can always do what she likes!
----Yiming WANG, 2018 Graduate in Ens 4+0 programme. Assistant Editor in Sustainability, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, Beijing Office