Each week, we will introduce an interview with an early-career researcher working on the MAMBO project. Meet the scientists who bring innovation to the way we monitor biodiversity across Europe.

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Can you introduce yourself and your research in a couple of sentences?

I’m a postdoctoral researcher at UFZ, and my work focuses on the science–policy interface around biodiversity and climate-related knowledge. In MAMBO, I have been especially involved in thinking about how biodiversity monitoring results can become more relevant and usable for broader policy and assessment processes.

What knowledge gap is your PhD thesis focused on?

A key gap I focus on is the distance between producing scientific knowledge and actually using it in policy and assessment. Advances in biodiversity monitoring are essential, but technical innovation alone does not guarantee uptake, so I am interested in the institutional and policy conditions that make knowledge credible, relevant, and actionable.

How has MAMBO directly shaped or enabled your thesis research? Were there datasets, fieldwork opportunities, or collaborations that changed your direction?

Since I joined MAMBO in a later phase, I would not say the project fundamentally redirected my research or changed it through a specific dataset or fieldwork opportunity. What it did provide was a valuable setting for engaging more concretely with questions of policy relevance, knowledge uptake, and the science–policy interface, especially in relation to biodiversity monitoring and assessment. to my mind, this has helped me situate my own work more clearly within ongoing European and international discussions, including those connected to IPBES and IPCC.

Do your scientific results contribute to solving national or European problems, and can they be used to inform policies? If so, to which policies would they be relevant?

I think the work could potentially contribute by helping clarify how biodiversity monitoring knowledge can better support policy uptake and implementation. In the European context, that is relevant to biodiversity governance more broadly, including the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the wider framework for mapping and monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is also relevant to science–policy processes that connect biodiversity and climate assessment, including work linked to assessments.

As MAMBO wraps up, how do you see its research to continue?

I hope MAMBO’s legacy continues not only through the tools and monitoring innovations themselves, and also through their longer-term uptake. For me, an important next step is ensuring that these advances become embedded in ongoing monitoring, assessment, and policy processes, rather than remaining only technical achievements at project level.

What's next for you professionally?

I would like to continue working on questions around climate, biodiversity, and policy relevance, especially where research can help strengthen the connection between knowledge production and decision-making. I see the science–policy interface as an area where there is still a great deal of important work to do!

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