Summary

Hei! I am currently a fixed-term Researcher (August 2023 – May 2025) at the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway. I will be contributing to research and instructive workshops as part of the “Biodiversity Digital Twin project,” focusing on data and information science of biodiversity data. Prior to this (July 2022 – June 2023), I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio (US), where I taught mycology (field- and quantitative-based) and general biology lectures & labs, and contributed to undergraduate student research. Please check out my employment page to see all of the many places I have worked at, whether as a researcher or a teacher.

I focus on quantitative ecology, i.e., data and analytics, in order to investigate terrestrial ecology in the context of global change (atmospheric chemistry, climate change, land-use change and pollution). This is inclusive of community, species-specific, diversity and phenology patterns, because they demonstrate processes (i.e., behaviors) occurring within an organism, that are patterned across spatiotemporal scales, and are perturbed by global change. We need to understand where organisms are, and what they do in terms of ecological and evolutionary principles, to then go about sustaining their futures alongside other organisms in a given natural environment.

Fungi are the primary microbial group I tend to research, and I am a botanist as well. Fungi are fascinating and complex organisms. They conduct fundamental processes in carbon and nutrient cycling, related to decomposition, and nearly all plants are in a form of symbiosis with them, not to mention the many interactions with humans, whether pathogens, sources of nutrition, or in managed systems such as the agricultural and forestry services. Fungi can be challenging to understand, but are crucial for the health and functioning of natural and urban systems!

Ultimately (and most broadly), I am a terrestrial ecologist, therefore interested in all components of biology, environmental science and natural history.

My career path has been a bit “non-traditional” in that I started immediately and primarily with university teaching (2009 – 2013) after my PhD (2005 – 2009), and followed that with the more standard post-doctoral research path that, especially in Europe, continues as a fixed-term researcher during career development (2013 – 2021). I returned to the States early in 2021 (covid impact statement), and taught again for a year (2022-2023). I am returning back to Europe and research in 2023; to this point, it seems that sometimes I contribute to research initiatives, and other times I am involved in teaching.

Research topics 

Global change (climate, nitrogen, CO2, O3, teaching)

Ecology (conservation, community, ecosystems, invasion, landscape, macro-, phenology, teaching)

Data science & analytics (obtaining, wrangling (formatting & processing), managing, and analysing data)

Mycology (conservation, ecology, global change, identification (mushrooms, root tips, molecular), invasion, fungaria, mycorrhizae, teaching, wood-decay)

Observational data (citizen (= community) science, herbarium/fungaria collections, meta-databases, open-access)

R (for data wrangling, statistical analyses, scripting, teaching)

Statistical analyses (distributional modelling, experimental design, multivariate analyses, mixed effects models, projections, regression techniques, spatial analyses)

Molecular data & processing (DNA extraction, High Throughput Sequencing, Sanger sequencing and (T)RFLP)

Field work (arboretum, experimental design, global change, natural lands, productivity, respiration, restoration)

 

Photo credit of CA: Evia photos
Other photos: CA