• I completed my PhD studies at Stockholm University in 2021 with the dissertation "Functional Diversity of Marine Zooplankton – Integrating DNA Metabarcoding and Food Web Modelling”.
• From 2022 to 2024 I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, developing methods for investigating food web composition and dynamics with environmental DNA.
• Since January 2025 I have been back at Stockholm University, continuing my research with an emphasis on the Baltic Sea ecosystem and its challenges.

I study how marine functional biodiversity supports important ecosystem services (such as fisheries, climate regulation, and ecotourism) and how these are affected by climate change, overfishing, eutrophication, and other anthropogenic disturbances. I base my research on network theory and energy flux modeling, as primary tools to identify and quantify ecosystem functions in complex ecosystems.

My research is supported by two recent technological advancements that enable the construction of highly resolved food web models with better precision than ever before:

1. Taxonomic identification using DNA metabarcoding contributes to data on species distribution, seasonality, and feeding selectivity (what species are overlapping in time and space, and who eats whom in the ecosystem).

2. The movement towards open and FAIR data has made available large amounts of data on species' functional traits.

The global biodiversity loss is hitting marine ecosystems hard. We can already witness how species loss impacts key ecosystem functions that are of importance to human societies. But biodiversity means more than just species numbers. Functional biodiversity refers to the diversity of species interactions, interactions with the physical environment, and the diversity of ecosystem functions. It is largely this type of biodiversity that sustains resilient and stable ecosystems. Despite the importance of functional biodiversity, it remains poorly understood, especially in marine ecosystems where large parts of the food web are made up of microscopic organisms that are difficult to study in detail.

The primary aims of my research are to:

1. Develop a mechanistic understanding of how marine functional biodiversity supports important ecosystem services and how anthropogenic factors influence ecosystem structure and functioning.

2. Develop a framework to include functional biodiversity in marine ecosystem management plans to maximize management strategies for resilient ocean ecosystems.