Portrait

​​I am broadly interested in how the biodiversity of phytoplankton communities influences aquatic ecosystem functioning, both in natural and engineered systems. For my masters’ thesis, I tested how algal diversity influences nutrient removal and biomass productivity in an industrial system using dairy wastewater to cultivate algae. My PhD focused on how intraspecific trait variation in marine phytoplankton shapes productivity, and how variation in algal food quality can influence trophic transfer to zooplankton.

In my current work at Eawag, I am 1) joining a project testing how algae respond at the metabolic level to interactive effects of temperature and resource availability, and 2) starting a new project which tests how the chemical compounds released by algae into the water (i.e., the exometabolome) influence coexistence and productivity among species, and also tests which environmental factors select for the extracellular excretion of such compounds. With this work, I hope to improve our understanding of chemically-mediated interactions in freshwater green algae, and to generate insights into ecologically sound strategies of cultivating algae for sustainable food and fuel.

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Curriculum Vitae

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