SESS is led by Chris Topping who is an ecological modeller with 30 years modelling experience and a background in agricultural zoology. He works with environmental risk assessment as well as wildlife and human modelling.
He is the instigator for and main developer for ALMaSS, developed over 25 years, and now forming part of the toolbox used by EFSA for pollinator risk assessment (ApisRAM). He is also editor in chief of the Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal (FESMJ), and vice-chair of the EFSA PPR panel.

Luna has a MSc in Biology, and has worked with the SESS goup since early 2019, now as the SESS centre administrator.

She assists with a broad range of tasks including; administration and coordination of SESS-involved proposals and projects; arrangement and documentation of project meetings and workshops; communication with partners and stakeholders; project budget and time allocations; SESS social media channels; ALMaSS updates related to crop management.

Yoko is an ecologist with broad knowledge about ecology of wild and domesticated plants and insects, in particular pollinators. Her research field covers plant-pollinator interactions, in particular ecology of wild and managed bees, ecological networks, landscape ecology, farmland ecology, historical ecology, conservation and invasion biology, plant reproductive biology and crop production. She works on basic and applied projects with a focus on biodiversity, in particular in agricultural landscapes, and with a focus on the interaction between farmland and natural habitats. This includes functional diversity and the ecosystem services that wild insects provide to crops, in addition to effects of pesticide use on non-target organisms, including both plants and animals.

Xiaodong has a background in machine learning and agent based modelling with various application areas including ecological modelling, robotics and building research. Currently, he mainly works on development of new species models for ALMaSS and model validation and sensitivity analysis using machine learning methods. 

James is a social scientist. He specialises in researching and applying theoretical concepts in decision-making processes for natural resource management. His particular areas of interest are adaptive management, decision modelling, multi-actor engagement and social learning. He is involved in a two EU H2020 projects, EcoStack and B-GOOD, the latter as work package leader for the project's multi-actor approach. He is also involved in the MUSBERA, Organic+ and IPol-ERA projects.

Jordan is a computational ecologist from Trinity College Dublin, with an interest in using individual-based models (IBMs) to gain insights into ecological and social systems. As part of the PoshBee project, he is currently working on creating a framework for Bombus sp. modelling within the ALMaSS framework. He will then parameterise the first ALMaSS Bombus sp. individual-based model for Bombus terrestris which will be used to assess the risks associated with different farming practices, as well as gaining insights into bumblebee ecology. Jordan is also working on the creation of spatial input data for Ireland to go into ALMaSS. Jordan has used IBMs while at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Leeds, to explore habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. This research included species habitat preference and coexistence conducting spatial analysis and developing a weighted version of a metric of habitat association, the phi coefficient of association, and testing this looking at carabid habitat association.

Jordan worked on remote sensing using LiDAR and hyperspectral imagery to explore the māmane (Sophora chrysophylla)/naio (Myoporum sandwicense) cloud forest of the Big Island of Hawai‘i, to explore the reasons for the decline of the endangered Hawaiian bird species Palila (Loxioides bailleui) while completing a Masters and lecturing at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

During his time at Forest Research, the research agency of the British Forestry Commission, as a spatial landscape ecologist, Jordan worked with local councils and forest districts across Scotland and Northern England integrating habitat and people networks into planning. He created decision support tools taking into consideration reaching targets for biodiversity, people and hydrological planning. Jordan also collaborated with national parks, Scottish Natural Heritage and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), including work looking at the impacts of forestry on heathland birds.

Peet has a MSc in Biology from Aarhus University. He supports the SESS team in the IPol-ERA project regarding coordination and desk research on pollinators, pesticides and risk assessment, as well as the EcoStack project regarding species modelling by searching and providing information on species' biological parameters needed to model species' behaviour and specifications.  

Astrid has a MSc in Biology from Aarhus University. She supports the SESS team with establishing an overview of the modelling developments, as well as running simulation scenarios for our ALMaSS involved projects.  

Natasha has a BSc in Anthropology and MSc in Human Security from Aarhus University. She is conducting interviews and participant workshops, and assists the SESS team in developing the social science side of the centre. She is mainly involved in our Organic+ project, collaborating with James. 

Elżbieta’s main interest is in the assessment of landscape structure and its influence on ecological processes, biodiversity, and distribution and dispersal of organisms. Her background is in physical geography with expertise in GIS&T and spatial modeling. Elżbieta is currently involved in two EU-funded projects: within B-GOOD she is supervising development of EU database of floral resources for bees and spatio-temporal modeling of floral resources at the landscape scale, and within EcoStack she is developing spatio-temporal models of agricultural landscapes for the purpose of population modeling.

As part of the SESS Team, Elżbieta supports and coordinates development of ALMaSS landscape models for several EU countries. She is also involved in the development of species models, including model for the red mason bee Osmia bicornis, which has been developed within the project “Beneficial insects in agricultural landscape: modelling effect of pesticides and landscape structure” funded by the Polish National Science Centre.

Nuno’s background is in Terrestrial Ecology. In his master thesis, he evaluated climate change effects on isopod populations exposed to metals. Afterwards he was grantee in a couple of SEEL projects, performing ecotoxicological tests with soil organisms. Since 2017, he was involved in the POLL-OLE-GI project to developed and test field protocols to gather information on the honeybee colony development and landscape. Since then, he started his PhD to study the impact of landscape structure and management on the development of honeybee colonies, participating in several projects (EFSA bee data collection, B-GOOD, EU Bee Partnership) to gather data mainly at the colony level.

As part of the SESS Team, Nuno is responsible for the collection of field data on honeybee colonies in several projects (EFSA bee data collection, B-GOOD) and data treatment of bee colony data, collaborating with AU in contributing with data for the development of the ApisRAM model.

Antonio is an agro-economist. His fields of research are circular economy and agent-based simulation. His contribution in ALMaSS concerns the inclusion of socio-economic factors in the simulations as well as modelling circular transition pathways in ALMaSS.