Biography

My research interests revolve around tropical forests and their floras, especially those of Malesia and the Amazon-Andean region. Currently, I work in the CRC 990 EFForTS, a large Indonesian-German research collaboration attempting to understand drivers and effects of tropical land-use change in lowland Sumatra, Indonesia. For my PhD, I conducted research on tropical mountain forests of Sulawesi, trying to understand different dimensions of plant diversity in relation to eco-environmental factors and evolutionary history. I am interested in floristic work and alpha taxonomy, as well as plant ecology along environmental gradients. Further interests comprise the historical biogeography of species and ecosystems, conservation biology, and the impact of human activities and climate-change on habitats in the tropics.