We are a group of young scientists determined to make a positive change in the world. Our team brings together world-leading expertise in modern DNA sequencing technologies, complex systems science, biogeochemistry, satellite and drone remote sensing, and AI. The innovative combination of these technologies makes it possible, for the first time, to characterize entire ecological communities and examine the fundamental processes supporting biodiversity in archipelagos around the world.
Dr. Melissa Ward
Melissa received her PhD from the University of California, Davis and conducted her post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford, studying ocean and community-based solutions to climate change. As the lead scientist of Windward Sciences, her work focuses on coastal biogeochemistry and the role soils can play in carbon reduction and climate mitigation.
Pirta Palola
Pirta is passionate about ecology, economics, and complex systems science. In her research, she combines novel technologies including probabilistic AI, numerical simulations, and remote sensing. A member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club and former rear-commodore of the Oxford University Yacht Club, Pirta is an experienced sailor and skipper of the Island Microbiome research vessel. Pirta is currently a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Aura Raulo
Aura is a microbial ecologist and an artist working at Queen’s College, University of Oxford and University of Turku. As a scientist, Aura’s research has focused on how symbiotic microbial communities spread in social networks of host individuals, and how they evolve inside the evolutionary trees of their host species. As an artist Aura uses prose, performance and installation art to explore how diversity of life emerges in landscapes of contact and isolation.
Dr. Eveliina Hanski
Eveliina is a researcher at the University of Helsinki and the University of Oxford, studying host-associated and environmental microbial communities, with a particular focus on temporal dynamics. Her work spans diverse systems, including an island mice microbiota model she developed during her PhD at Oxford.
Dr. Guilhem Sommera-Klein
Guilhem is a microbial ecologist at the Inria Centre of the University of Bordeaux, France. He studies the spatial and temporal dynamics of microbial communities, with a focus on building probabilistic models to leverage microbial molecular data. He has worked on soil, ocean plankton, and gut microbiota. He studied physics as an undergrad and holds a PhD in ecology.
Juuso-Oskari Valli
Juuso-Oskari is an artist-researcher thriving towards a more holistic understanding of reality by colliding the subjective with scientific methodology. By the means of elegant simplification he is trying to create a platform where complex abstract phenomena can become more understandable and relatable to human experience. His strengths include understanding the relations and meanings between things through artistic visioning with the means of photography, sound art, music and prose.