EDUCATION
13.10.2013 – 20.04.2018

PhD in Sciences (Biology) at the Faculty of Science, Department of Biology, Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, University of Leuven, Belgium
PhD Thesis: Quantifying the contributions of ecology and evolution to population and community trait change: methods development and implementation

24.09.2012 – 27.06.2013

Internship Specific Teaching Education (SLO) Mathematics

24.09.2012 – 27.06.2013

Credit contract Sciences
Followed courses: Advanced Ecology, Theoretical modelling in the Biology, Statistics in Biology, Bioinformatics: quantitative genetics, Terrestrial Ecology and Evolutionary Ecology

27.09.2010 – 28.06.2012

Master of Science in Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Department of Mathematics, University of Leuven, Belgium
Master Thesis: Curves and surfaces in the Heisenberg group

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
14.05.2018 – present

Postdoctoral researcher at University of Zurich and Eawag

13.10.2013 – 20.04.2018

PhD student at University of Leuven

GRANTS

Personal grant:

• PhD fellowship of Flanders Innovation and entrepreneurship (IWT), 01.01.2014 – 31.12.2017 Grants for international research visits

Grants for international research visits:

• Godfrey Hewitt Mobility Award 2018 (€2000) – Evolution of dispersal in spatially structured foodwebs
• FWO travel grant – research stay at Cornell University in the group of Nelson Hairston Jr., 15.07.2017 – 10.08.2017
• FWO travel grant – research stay at Eawag in the group of Florian Altermatt, 01.05.207 – 30.06.2017

INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (past + future)

• Invited keynote presentation: Eco-evolutionary signatures in space, DynaTrait, Hannover, Germany, 8-11 October 2018
• Oral presentation: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: assessing the importance of ecology and evolution to temporal population and community trait change, Indo-Swiss collaboration primer in Evolution and Ecology, Zürich, Switzerland, 18-20 September 2018
• Oral presentation: Resurrection ecology reveals high flexibility of genetic covariance matrices following strong selection, ESEB, Montpellier, France, 21 August 2018
• Invited presentation: Eco-evolutionary dynamics in urbanized landscapes: evolution, species sorting and the change in zooplankton body size along urbanization gradients, BES, Ghent, Belgium, 14 December 2017
• Seminar: Multivariate trait change in a natural Daphnia magna population: a variance-covariance matrix approach, 24 November 2017
• Invited seminar: Eco-evolutionary partitioning metrics: what can we (not) learn from them?, Eawag, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland, 18 October 2017
• Joint keynote talk with Nelson Hairston Jr.: Daphnia Eco-Evolutionary Process Meets Seasonal Plankton Dynamics – when the Consumer Evolves, DynaTrait, Hannover, Germany, 9 October 2017
• Invited presentation: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: partitioning community trait variation into ecological and evolutionary components, Conference of evolutionary biology, Marseille, France, 29 September 2017
• Oral presentation: Partitioning community trait variation into ecological, evolutionary and eco-evolutionary components in time and space, ESEB, Groningen, Netherlands, 24 August 2017
• Oral presentation: The evolution of the G-matrix: A Daphnia magna example, Eawag, Dübendorf, Switzerland, 23 June 2017
• Invited Seminar: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: partitioning community trait variation into ecological and evolutionary components, GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany, 19 January 2017
• Oral presentation: The evolution of the G-matrix: A Daphnia magna example, EVENET, Ghent, Belgium, 20 December 2016
• Seminar: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: Partitioning ecological and evolutionary components in community trait variation, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, 1 December 2016
• Invited Seminar: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: partitioning ecological and evolutionary contributions in community trait change, Eawag, Zürich, Switzerland, 22 September 2016
• Invited presentation: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: partitioning community trait change into ecological and evolutionary contributions, Experimental Evolution & Community Dynamics Minisymposium, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany, 19th – 21st September 2016
• Oral presentation: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: partitioning ecological and evolutionary contributions in community trait change, Ecological Society of America (ESA), Fort Lauderdale, Florida, August 2016
• Poster presentation at Conference: The genomic basis of eco-evolutionary change, Conference Centre CSF Monte Veritá, Switzerland, June 5th – 9th 2016
• Oral presentation: A tasty bite in the eco-evo sandwich: partitioning ecological and evolutionary components in community trait variation, BES, Annual Meeting EICC, Edinburgh, Scotland, December 2015
• Seminar: Eco-evolutionary partitioning metrics: assessing the importance of ecology and evolution in temporally and spatially separated populations and communities, Leuven, Belgium, May 2015
• Oral presentation: Eco-evolutionary partitioning metrics: assessing the importance of ecology and evolution across a temporal and spatial gradient, Eighth International Symposium on Eco-evolutionary Dynamics, Antwerp, Belgium, February 2015
• Poster presentation at BES and SFE Joint Annual Meeting, Lille, France, December 2014
• Poster presentation at the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting, Lunteren, Netherlands, February 2014

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH VISITS

• Host: Dr. Blake Matthews, Eawag, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland, 15.01.2018-15.02.2018,
  purpose: working on review paper for special issue Functional Ecology
• Host: Dr. Nelson Hairston Jr., Cornell University, Ithaca, US, 15.07.2017-10.08.2017 (FWO funded),
  purpose: implementing reaction norm approach on collected data from Oneida Lake
• Host: Dr. Florian Altermatt, Eawag, Dübendorf, Switzerland, 01.05.2017-30.06.2017 (FWO funded),
  purpose: implementing reaction norm approach on collected protist data
• Host: Dr. Eelke Jongejans, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, 28.11.2016-02.12.2016,
  purpose: starting collaboration on integrating integral projection models with reaction norm approach
• Host: Dr. Andrew Beckerman, Sheffield University, Sheffield, UK, 31.10.2016-04.11.2016,
  purpose: setting up R code for data analysis on covariance matrices

SUPERVISON OF MASTER’S AND BACHELOR’S THESIS

Master thesis

• Héléne Vanvelk – Thermal differences in Daphnia magna populations across a latitudinal gradient. Quantifying population dynamics with Integral Projection Models, 25.09.2017-29.06.2018, University of Leuven

Bachelor theses

• Abhishek Ajay – Analysis of transcriptomics data of a natural Daphnia magna population under varying predation pressure, 15.05.2017-05.05.2018, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
• Adriaan Buvé – An analysis of multivariate selection and P-matrices on an existing data set (how does selection acts on multiple traits at the same time?), 09.10.2016 – 12.05.2017, University of Leuven
• Arthur Dewilde – The relative contribution of evolution and ecology to trait change in a set-up of experimental evolution, 12.10.2015-13.05.2016, University of Leuven