As a multidisciplinary team with numerous ongoing projects, the SESS team benefits from our day-to-day collaboration, where we often contribute to various overlapping projects. We provide each other with a broad range of insights and inputs that strengthen the development and outcome of our research. Our work is more adapted to our strengths and how we work individually than the other way around. We all share a great enthusiasm for the work we are doing, and all team members have an instinctive drive to support each other and the team. We are inclusive and there is a general focus and understanding of the balance between work and private life – and how that balance can look different depending on each person.
The core SESS team is situated on the same floor in Aarhus University Campus building 1171, where offices are next to each other. Our work and team efforts thrive from in-office conversations and coordination, while we also value the advantages of working from home.
You can find a few more details of our individual backgrounds and current focus of research on this page.
The core SESS team is comprised of 16 members from Aarhus University, Dept. of Agroecology, and includes both a full professor, senior researchers, researchers, postdocs, research assistants, programmers, and academic employees.
SESS has a large network of collaborators across the EU because of the ALMaSS work.
This broad network means that the centre has a large number of affiliate organisations, including the following and their contributions to ALMaSS:
Institute of Environmental Sciences (IES)
Department of Agricultural Sciences (Agraria)
Centre for Functional Ecology (CFE)
The Spanish Institute of Game and Wildlife Research (IREC)
Natural Sciences, Disivion of Botany (Botany)
Institute for Strategies and Technology Assessment (SF)
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).
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.
Geoff is a geographer with expertise and 30-years' experience in GIS, remote sensing and image analysis. Many of the projects he has worked upon have related to landscape, land cover and habitats in Denmark and other European countries. He is responsible for the development of the GIS side of DK landscape modelling.
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, PollinERA and SYBERAC, the latter as work package leader for the project's multi-actor approach. He is also involved in the MUSBERA, Organic+ and EcoMetric projects.
Elżbieta is employed part time with SESS and part time with the Jagiellonian University. 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 Better-B 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 PollinERA she is developing spatio-temporal models of agricultural landscapes as well as preparing pollinator species models.
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 is takes part in the MUSBERA project. She is also active in BFOOD-DK.
Trine has a PhD in particle physics from Lund University, and has previously worked on the ATLAS Experiment as a PostDoc at DESY, Hamburg. She has a strong interest in the climate and biodiversity crisis, especially the impact our current food system has on both.
Trine works with us as a PostDoc where she contributes to our tasks on biodiversity-friendly farm management scenarios in the Organic+ and EcoMetric projects.
Recently she has started a project with BSS MAPP Centre where she will spend the majority of her time the next couple of years while still contributing to SESS projects.
Liyan is an ecotoxicologist who recently finished her PhD at the Section of Terrestrial Ecology at our Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University.
Now, she takes part in the SESS team, where she will apply her competencies within ecotoxicology, environmental risk assessment of chemicals and ecological modelling.
Liyan is involved in the EFSA ApisRAM project, where she will support the new developments adding greater functionality for pesticide and biological agent simulation, expanding the capability of ApisRAM towards its use for regulatory purposes.
Kristina is a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in innovation, organisational learning, knowledge management, and stakeholder engagement. She is fully occupied with supporting the PERA project’s AREA #4 in collaboration with James. Here, she is exploring stakeholder requirements for the development of a dynamic knowledge platform aimed at assessing the risks of plant protection products.
Bjarke has a Bachelor of Engineering from Aarhus University and has completed a DTU Ph.D. course on physically based rendering and material appearance modelling. He has previous experience as a Software Engineer focused on computer graphics, and he has a great interest in rendering and low-level programming. Bjarke's work at SESS includes working with the group to increase the efficiency of the models, debugging and testing them as well as maintaining the ALMaSS code.
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.
In addition, Luna works as the Administrative Coordinator of the Section of Agricultural Biodiversity.
