Welcome Stefan Geisen - NEW SE
Submitted by editor on 6 May 2024.
Please join us in welcoming our newest soil ecologist Stefan Geisen to our editorial board! Take a look at their interview.
Personal website: https://www.wur.nl/en/persons/stefan-geisen.htm
Twitter: @stefan_geisen
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
1. What's your main research focus at the moment?
Soil ecology in a broad sense. Microbiome interactions, importance of higher trophic organisms (trophic cascades etc), plant-soil interactions...
2. Can you describe your research career? Where, what, when?
Anything but planned... I started 'real' research in my PhD in Cologne on soil protists in 2011, from taxonomy to ecology (what is there, why and what do they do). The embedding in an EU project got me great links to many scientists I am still working with and eventually also my Postdoc with Wim van der Putten at NIOO in the Netherlandsstarting in 2014. There I expanded my research to integrate bacteria, fungi, protists and nematodes in soil systems. This broader scope I keep having at the Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University, where I started as an Assistant Prof in 2019. The main thing that changed back then was that I am not increasingly focus on soil ecology and the role of soil biodiversity in agricultural systems.
3. How come that you became a scientist in ecology?
Luck... I am a very open person, and science was not the only option I had early on. but i increasingly started liking science and especially ecology during my studies and PhD. Big and important questions can be addressed and the field is friendly (also very important...)
4. What do you do when you're not working?
Kids... 3 boys that keep me more than busy. but as also the smallest is growing, some freedom emerges that I fill predominantly with sports, but also meeting friends!
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