Anni
Hämäläinen
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Areas of expertise
Biography
After gaining my MSc degree in Ecology and Environmental management from the University of Jyväskylä, I moved to Germany to complete my PhD on sex differences in aging of a wild primate at the University of Göttingen. I then completed two postdocs in Canada, first examining life history variation of red squirrels under resource fluctuation (University of Alberta), then switching briefly to epidemiology to investigate human sensory-cognitive aging (University of Montreal / University of British Columbia). After this, I returned to Europe and started a project investigating host-microbiota-environment interactions using rodent models (University of Oulu, University of Jyväskylä, Jagiellonian University). In 2023, I started at the University of Turku as a TCSMT collegium researcher and set up a "fly lab" to study the effects of temperature variation on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity, i.e. the ability of an organism to respond to environmental changes by changing the expression of various traits.
Teaching
I am involved in organizing the Biology Research Seminar and give lectures in the Evolutionary Biology course. I supervise students at all levels and MSc/ BSc thesis and internship positions are available in the lab.
Research
I have broad research interests in the field of ecology and environmental biology, and especially the interactions between species / individuals and their environments. Currently, I study evolutionary phenomena, such as the adaptation to fluctuating temperatures, using a fruit fly model.