Alena is an aquatic ecologist with a strong background in epidemiology and a particular interest in parasitic fungi and the health of freshwater ecosystems.

More information about Alena Gsell

Professional experience

Alena began her academic journey by studying English and German language and literature, followed by a transformative year as a volunteer researcher with the Kalahari Meerkat Project in South Africa. She then completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Basel before pursuing a Master's degree in Epidemiology and Infection Biology at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. There, she focused on assessing accessibility of domestic dog populations to rabies vaccination in Tanzania. Alena earned her PhD at the NIOO-KNAW in 2013, studying the role of parasites in maintaining host genetic diversity.

Following her PhD, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the IGB-Berlin, evaluating early warning signals for regime shifts in lakes within the BioDiversa+ project, LimnoTip. She later returned to NIOO-KNAW with an NWO VENI grant to explore the role of parasitic fungi in aquatic food webs. Alena also worked as a researcher at Wageningen Food Safety Research, focusing on natural toxins, particularly cyanotoxins. She is currently a guest researcher at NIOO-KNAW, with her up-to-date publication list available here.

Since 2023, Alena has been an assistant professor at the Department of Environmental Biology, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University. She teaches courses on biodiversity, aquatic ecology, and global change within the Biology programs, the MSc program Governance of Sustainability, and the CML Minor in Sustainable Development. Alena is dedicated to fostering a safe, inclusive, and supportive research environment that promotes productivity, creativity, and well-being for all.

Research topic

Alena’s primary research explores the role of fungal infections in aquatic ecosystems, investigating how these infections influence ecosystem functions and health, especially under the pressures of global change. Her second research focus is on the resilience of aquatic ecosystems and water quality, with a particular emphasis on urban blue infrastructure. In many urban water bodies, cyanobacterial blooms pose significant challenges; therefore, her third line of research seeks to understand the drivers of these blooms and their toxicity, while also developing potential mitigation strategies. Across all these research areas, Alena adopts a network perspective, emphasizing the importance of interactions and drivers within food webs. Her research methodologies include combinations of controlled experiments to understand mechanisms, field observations to explore the complex interplay of multiple drivers, long-term data analysis, and modeling.

Publications