Working in Umeå

Overview of research in Umeå

Umeå is located in northern Sweden, with a large and young university with strong research environments in ecology, plant science and molecular biology. In our institution (Department of Ecology, Environment and Geoscience) research is characterized by a strong interaction across disciplines, and also with synergies with the Umeå campus of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Our department has a strong focus on northern ecosystems, and we have infrastructure in the Abisko Research Station with the Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC). CIRC provides technical and logistical support for ecosystem science research in Arctic Sweden, making cutting-edge research in a harsh environment “easy”. The year-round connection by train with Abisko makes Umeå University an ideal place for Climate impacts research in Arctic ecosystems.

Besides research in Abisko, we also participate in the Krycklan Catchment Study, a flagship infrastructure of ecosystem science monitoring in the boreal biome, located less than one hour from Umeå and run by our colleagues at SLU. In Sweden there exists also a large monitoring network that we are involved to some extent and is incredibly beneficial for our research (SITES).

Umeå University also has an emphasis on interdisciplinarity and collaboration across disciplines. The core of this is the Integrated Science Lab (IceLab), a physical space shared by scientists from different disciplines but with a common approach to scientific problems. With a background in complex systems and modelling, IceLab strives to break silos in research disciplines and being a welcoming space for new ideas. IceLab also now hosts an Excellence center on “modeling adaptive mechanisms in living systems under stress”, which provides an umbrella to study stress responses of living systems, from genes, cells to ecosystems. Since 2025 I am based in IceLab as an assistant professor.