© Uni Leipzig, A. Gildemeister
Main Focus
I head the Department of Systematic Botany and Functional Biodiversity and the Botanical Garden at the University of Leipzig. As founding director and member of the speaker council of iDiv - the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research - I am dedicated to the many aspects of biological diversity. Following my previous role as head of the Independent Junior Research Group Organismic Biogeochemistry 2005-2009 at the MPI-BGC, I remained loyal to the institute as a Max Planck Fellow, leading the Functional Biogeography group together with Jens Kattge. In 2024 I was appointed External Scientific Member of the institute.