Research interests
Microorganisms shape the physical, chemical and biological state of our planet by facilitating the storage, transport, and turnover of key elements. While these activities are key to the production and consumption of greenhouse gases and water quality, approaches, theory and models that integrate microbial influence in the context of biogeochemical, ecosystem and climatic processes still need to be developed. Our ignorance about microbes is even the more astonishing given their interactions with all macroscopic life.
My main research interest is to understand how microbes shape aquatic food webs and ecosystem-scale biogeochemical transformations as for example the production of greenhouse gases. To obtain such systems-level understanding requires collaborations across the fields of aquatic ecology and biogeochemistry.
By combining omics (including DNA/RNA/protein sequencing and advanced computational approaches) and stable isotope tracer studies we intend to advance ecological (i.e. food web interactions) and biogeochemical (i.e. greenhouse gas production) frameworks to a more predictive understanding based on mechanisms. The need for such understanding has never been more relevant than now in the light of ongoing global climate warming and massive human-induced alterations of ecosystems.
Background
My original training is that of an ecologist at the University of Vienna and of a microbial ecologist at Uppsala University where I worked on describing microbial diversity of inland waters and the mechanisms underlying patterns in microbial diversity. Later I was a post doc at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology working on marine microbes, in particular on abundant marine Pelagibacter. These intriguing bacteria have very small genomes resulting in the depletion of essential biosynthesis pathways besides of being free living. Studying the ecological implications of genome reduction has been the interest of our research group during my time as an Assistant Professor at Uppsala University.
Since 2018 I am Professor at the University of Oslo which led to a shift in my research focus to microbe and climate repercussions as well as the impacts of other anthropogenic disturbances on microbial functioning in aquatic systems.