I am a senior researcher in the MEP group at NORCE Climate and Environment, affiliated with the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research and a 2022 National Geographic Explorer. My research interests center around investigating the impact of environmental stressors and climate change on marine biodiversity. I apply molecular tools, such as metabarcoding and metagenomics, on water samples and modern and ancient marine sediments to investigate the effects of present and past environmental changes on marine communities. I mainly focus on microbial eukaryotes, which are highly abundant and play important roles in marine ecosystems, yet are largely understudied. I am currently involved in the project NEEDED, which investigates changes in biodiversity in the Nordic Seas in relation with environmental changes across the Holocene using a combination of ancient DNA and traditional paleoecological proxies. I am further contributing to the project CLIFORD, which studies present and past environmental and oceanographic changes in Norwegian fjords and their effects on the ecosystem over the last ~400 years.
My main expertise lays in molecular biodiversity research using single-cell barcoding, metabarcoding and ancient DNA sequencing. In addition, I have conducted single-cell transcriptomics and genomics to study gene evolution and functional aspects of protist diversity. The bulk of my research to date has focused on shell-building groups of protists with a fossil record, such as Foraminifera and Arcellinida. Fieldwork and expeditions play a big role in my research, currently mostly leading to the Arctic and Norwegian fjords.
