As a scientist, I am an evolutionary ecologist and integrative biologist, with long-standing interest in the processes that maintain and alter biological diversity and mediate organismal and population responses to environmental change. After I completed my MSc studies (focus on animal ecology) at Oulu University (FI) in 1997, I did my PhD (focus on population biology) at Uppsala University (SE) in 2002, followed by a post-doc at McGill University (CA) until 2006 and to junior scientist position at ETH-Zurich (CH) until 2008 and tenured senior scientist at Eawag (CH) until 2021. I started as a tenure track professor at JYU in 2021, and tenured as full professor in 2024. I am currently the head of department of Biological and Environmental Sciences (since January 2026).
Across the years I have worked on birds (behavioural ecology), amphibians (adaptation to environmental stress), fish (spatio-temporal diversification) and invertabrates (effects of human induced pollution, host-microbiome variation).
I take a holistic perspective to understanding the dynamics of organism-environment interactions, from molecular to individual and ecosystem levels - with strong conceptual basis and experimental work as a solid foundation.
