Research interests

• Community ecology
• Infectious diseases & zoonoses
• Ecosystem management
• Forests, agriculture & biodiversity
• Antipredatory strategies

 

 

Scientific projects

I am a postdoctoral fellow funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

'Virus biology, host ecology, and human behaviour as determinants for coronaviral zoonoses' is a project I currently coordinate. It is jointly untertaken by African and German scientists of Ulm University, Bonn University (Germany), the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) and the Kwane Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana). Our work is part of the German Research Foundation (DFG) funding initiative 'German African Cooperation Projects in Infectology' (2nd Call). More at the project website or from a DW feature. I work on a range of viruses in ecological contexts, mostly RNA viruses, in close collaboration with the institute of Christian Drosten in Bonn.

For previous research, I predominantly worked on Barro Colorado Island, terrestrial field station of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and along the eastern Australian coast in a region with significant UNESCO-listed World Heritage rainforests (Gondwana Rainforests of Australia). Focus was on bat behaviour and endocrine effects together with Justin Welbergen and Anne Goldizen as an Endeavour Australia-Europe Research Fellow based at the University of Queensland.

Delivering knowledge for the conservation of biodiversity to society and policy makers is important to me, which is why I am active with stakeholders and international organizations involved in this field including the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, UNEP, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

_{Images with permission by A. Cizmecioglu (Deutsche Welle)}