I am an Associate Professor for Quantitative Biodiversity Science and head of the Biogeography & Macroecology (BIOMAC) lab at the University of Amsterdam. With my research I am embedded in the Department Theoretical and Computational Ecology (TCE) at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED). Most of my research is focused on large-scale biodiversity patterns, macroecology, biogeography, biotic interactions (especially frugivory) and global change. With my work, I aim to understand how past, present and future environmental factors, species interactions, human impacts and evolutionary history influence species distributions and the structure and assembly of biological communities.
At IBED, I am the coordinator and teacher of the BSc course 'Biodiversity and Global Change' and the MSc course 'Global Ecology and Biodiversity'. I am further leading several research projects, including the eScience project eEcoLiDAR and the NWO-funded frugivory & palm diversification project. I recently finished the EU project 'GLOBal Infrastructures for Supporting Biodiversity research (GLOBIS-B)' for which I was the scientific coordinator. Moreover, I am also contributing to the efforts of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) by being a co-leader of the Data Task Force and a member of the Implementation Committee. For more details, please see my personal homepage and our BIOMAC lab webpage.