Current research

I am a post-doctoral researcher in the Nature-Based Solutions Research Group in University of Helsinki. I study the interplay between the environment, microbiota and human health. Immune-mediated diseases, such as allergy, have increased among urban populations in recent decades. It has been suggested that one of the main reasons for this increase is the reduced microbial diversity in urban environments, which prevents immune system to develop properly. Currently, I am working as a post doc in a project called NATUREWELL - "The health and well-being impacts of outdoor recreation – study on urban youth". This project studies various outdoor activities and how they affect the perceived psychological, social, and physical well-being of young urban people. My main responsibility and interest in the project is to study how the selected outdoor activities affect human microbiota.

 

My research aims are

• to find how characteristics of the environment, environmental microbiota, human microbiota and human immune system function are interrelated
• to use this information to find solutions to improve human immune system in urban environment

Aquatic community dynamics

I defended my doctoral thesis titled as “Metacommunitystructuring in stream systems: disentangling the roles of regional and local processes” in University of Oulu in 2015. During the doctoral studies, I worked in Large-Scale Ecology Lab in Finnish Environment Institute and I have continued this collaboration also after my doctoral studies. One important research theme has been to inspect the relative importance of environmental and spatial structuring on community structure and how indirect methods such as spatial location of the sites can be used to infer the importance of dispersal on community structuring.