My research focuses on how phytoplankton communities respond and adapt to environmental change across ecological and evolutionary timescales. I use the Baltic Sea as a model system to investigate how eutrophication, climate change and other human pressures shape plankton biodiversity, ecological functioning and evolutionary responses.

My research combines experimental ecology, molecular and genomic approaches, long-term environmental records and, increasingly, resurrection ecology and sedimentary environmental DNA. By integrating living organisms with biological archives preserved in marine sediments, I aim to reconstruct how plankton communities and populations have changed through time and understand their capacity to respond to future environmental conditions.

I lead the Molecular Ecology and Evolution research group at Åbo Akademi University and coordinate collaborative research across institutions and countries, including Finland’s participation in the European TREC (Traversing European Coastlines) programme. Through the Centre for Sustainable Ocean Science, I also work across disciplinary boundaries to connect fundamental ecological and evolutionary research with broader questions about the future and sustainability of the Archipelago Sea.