People
Catalina Chaparro Pedraza
Group leader
I am an evolutionary ecologist with a lifelong fascination with the natural world. My research seeks to understand the processes underlying the origin, resilience, and adaptability of biodiversity to be able to predict how biodiversity will respond to future changes.
Dhanya Bharath
PhD student
Growing up near the tropical rainforests of the Western Ghats in southern India, my fascination with the natural world blossomed early. My research interests lie in understanding biodiversity responses to changing environments. For my PhD, I am exploring how ecological communities can adapt and stay resilient in a rapidly transforming world.
Vanessa Cunha
Postodoc
What mainly interests me is how environmental change shapes phenotypic variation and evolutionary dynamics within and between species. I am particularly interested in how organisms respond to environmental stress through phenotypic plasticity and adaptation, and how these responses influence ecological interactions and community dynamics. Currently, I investigate how the rate of environmental change shapes the contribution of adaptation to ecological resilience across demographic, population, and community levels, and identify the genomic and phenotypic mechanisms underlying these responses.
Simona Moglia
Research assistant
I am a marine biologist by training, I found my way into freshwater research during a research fellowship at CNR-IRSA (Verbania), where I developed a passion for taxonomy and for the ecology of plankton communities and their interactions. I am currently a Research Assistant at Eawag, where I study the processes of resilience and adaptation of aquatic biodiversity to environmental change.