It is a pleasure to welcome two new NordBorN members to the team: Anna Moretti and Elias Koivisto.
Anna Moretti started as a NordBorN-PhD student at the NTNU University Museum in the beginning of September. Anna is a botanist with a MSc from the University of Vienna. Her PhD project will focus on the wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris), an established and naturalized alien species in the Arctic. She will use genomics to study its taxonomy and phylogeography, and test hypotheses for its success in the Arctic, including multiple introductions from different genetic sources, enemy release advantage related to plant defense compounds, and shifts in adaptive traits. Her research will add an important evolutionary component to ongoing interdisciplinary research on Arctic greening and invasion biology.
Elias started his PhD journey at UEF in Joensuu in the beginning of August. He holds a BSc in Biology-Earth sciences and a MSc in Geomatics from Stockholm University. His main research focus is studying the greening and shrubification of the Arctic region utilizing multispectral, UAV-RGB and LiDAR remote sensing data as well as field data with machine learning. A part of his research is also connecting these changes to reindeer herding patterns in Northern Fennoscandia and Yamal peninsula.