I am a researcher at the interface of Limnology, which is the Science of Freshwater Ecology, and Evolutionary Ecology and I am especially interested on how natural selection acts upon variation and how individuals are shaped by a specific environment. Overall, my research aims to understand how ecological and evolutionary dynamics affect food webs and whole ecosystems.
To that end, I combine stable isotope and morphological techniques, fatty acid analyses and behavioral studies that include manipulations in the field and lab.
After finishing my biology studies at the University Hamburg and University of Potsdam, Germany, including an external thesis at Texas A&M University, College Station, USA, I started my PhD at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, Germany, which I finished in 2013. Between 2014 and 2021, I was a PostDoc at the Department of Ecology and Genetics; Limnology at Uppsala University, Sweden. I then returned to Germany. Between 2021 and 2023, I was a postdoc and the scientific coordinator of the Research Training Group BioMove at the University of Potsdam. Since Dezember 2023, I am the Managing Director of the Ecological Research Station of the University of Cologne, located at the Lower Rhine in Rees-Bienen.