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Rhiannon Bolton

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr. Bolton (BVetMedSci, BVM BVS, MRes, PhD, MRCVS) is a veterinarian and conservation scientist with over a decade of experience across wildlife conservation, cryoconservation, reproductive science, biobanking and science communication. Her work bridges academic research and applied conservation, with a strong focus on collaborative, translational impact. Dr. Bolton joined Prof Williams’s Group in 2024, bringing extensive experience in interdisciplinary project leadership, grant development and cross-sector collaboration. In her current postdoctoral role, Dr. Bolton contributes to high-impact conservation biobanking projects, including the development of non-invasive live cell collection protocols designed to enable scalable and ethical biobanking for endangered wildlife. Her work involves close collaboration with laboratory scientists, veterinarians and conservationists ensuring that research outputs are robust, reproducible and directly applicable to conservation practice. She also holds a Conservation Fellowship at Chester Zoo, working internationally to optimise biobanking and cryopreservation standards.

Dr. Bolton has held senior roles in government and the charitable sector. As a Senior Veterinary Inspector with DEFRA’s Animal & Plant Health Agency, she exercised statutory authority over animal health and welfare enforcement, national disease control and zoo regulation. She later co-founded and operationalised a cryoconservation charity, where as principal staff member, she provided strategic and operational leadership, built governance and laboratory frameworks and secured funding.

Alongside her research, Dr. Bolton has a track record in academic publishing, grant development and continues to champion collaborative, One Health–informed approaches to delivering practical solutions to the biodiversity crisis.

Recent publications

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