Team
Current lab members
Cassandra Elphinstone, Postdoc
Cassandra is a two year NSERC postdoctoral fellow studying the genomics of Arctic plants in the Birkeland lab. She is also collaborating with and will spend about a third of her time in the Todesco Lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her postdoctoral research is exploring the role of structural variation in local adaptation in selfing and outcrossing Arctic species. What types of genomic variation are involved in the local adaptation of plants to diverse tundra environments (single base pair changes and/or larger chromosomal rearrangements)? Does the genomics of local adaptation differ between tundra species that reproduce through self-fertilization (selfing) and species that rely on fertilization from other individuals (outcrossing)?
E-mail: cassandra.elphinstone@gmail.com
Lise Grønnerød Huseby, PhD student
Lise is interested in the genetic basis of plant speciation and aims to test the snowball theory for the rate of evolution of hybrid incompatibilities in Arabidopsis lyrata.
E-mail: l.g.huseby@nhm.uio.no
Fenna Sondorp, Intern
Fenna is an intern from Inholland University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Biology and Medical Laboratory Research. She is currently completing an internship focused on long-read sequencing of Arctic plants.
E-mail: fennasondorp@gmail.com
Marie Kristine Brandrud, Guest Researcher
Marie is interested in genomics and speciation. The Brochmann-group at the Natural History Museum has previously showed an accumulation of redproductive incompatibilities in arctic selfing species, and Marie is currently working to genetically pinpoint those incompatibilities with QTL analysis in Cochlearia groenlandica. She also aims to investigate chromosome evolution in Cochlearia and will compare the Cochlearia groenlandica genome to its sister, Cochlearia excelsa, in a collaborative project with the Yant Lab at Nottingham University.
E-mail: m.k.brandrud@nhm.uio.no
You?
We welcome inquiries from motivated individuals who share our passion for plants and evolution! Whether you’re a postdoctoral researcher seeking new challenges, a recent MSc looking to pursue a Ph.D., or a bachelor student seeking a potential master project, drop me an email at siri.birkeland@nhm.uio.no!
We are also happy to support individual postdoc and researcher applications like the MSCA postdoctoral fellowship, or the Human Frontier Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. In addition, we have our own postdoctoral fellowship within the STADIS research hub at the Natural History Museum, which is announced at a yearly basis.
Co-supervised with other labs
- Ellen Dimmen Chapple: Master student in the Hvidsten lab, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
- Samuel Fredriksson: Master student in the Hvidsten lab, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
The EDGE group
Our lab is a part of the EDGE group at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. EDGE is an interdisciplinary research group consisting of people working on areas ranging from plant speciation and phylogenomics, the development of metabarcoding as a next-generation biodiversity assessment tool for society, and people’s influence on wild plants through use and trade throughout history.
Collaborators and friends
- Abel Gizaw - NBIO, Norway
- Anne Krag Brysting - CEES, University of Oslo, Norway
- Barnabas Daru - Stanford University, USA
- Cassandra Elphinstone - University of British Columbia, Canada
- Christian Brochmann, Natural History Museum, Norway
- Filip Kolar - Charles University, Czech Republic
- Johanna Leppälä - Natural Resources Institute, Finland
- Johannes Daniel Schwarwies - Stanford University, USA
- José Dinneny - Stanford University, USA
- Levi Yant - University of Nottingham, UK
- Loren Rieseberg - University of British Columbia, Canada
- Lovisa Gustafsson - The University Centre in Svalbard, Norway
- Lucas Marie-Orleach, CNRS, Université de Tours, France
- Margret Veltman - Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement, France
- Marie Kristine Brandrud - Natural History Museum, Norway
- Nathaniel Street - Umeå University, Sweden
- Peter Hoitinga - University of Groningen & Inholland University of Applied Science, Netherlands
- Simen Sandve - Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
- Sylvain Glemin - CNRS, Université Rennes, France
- Tanja Slotte - Stockholm University, Sweden
- Torgeir Hvidsten - Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
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