Helena Åström

Helena Åström is a University Lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, within the Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme. She is also a Teachers' Academy Fellow (since 2014) and part of the Plant Ecophysiology and Climate Change Group. Her work spans both plant biology research and educational sciences, with a focus on how plants adapt to winter conditions in a changing climate.

Her research interests primarily center on winter ecology of plants, particularly examining how mild winters affect plant survival, growth, and invasive species dynamics. She has conducted extensive research on field garlic (Allium oleraceum), studying its cytotypes, distribution, and reproductive strategies. Her work also investigates morphological adaptations of plants to winter conditions and the ecophysiology of boreal plants during winter. In educational sciences, she focuses on biology education, prior knowledge effects on learning, and systems thinking development in undergraduate biology students.

Analysis of her publications reveals two clear research trajectories: plant winter ecology (accounting for approximately 70% of her work) and biology education (30%). The plant research consistently examines how climate change, particularly milder winters, affects plant physiology, distribution, and invasive potential. Her educational research investigates how students' prior knowledge influences their learning trajectories in biology and development of systems thinking skills for complex environmental problems.

• Teachers Academy Fellow: University of Helsinki (2014)

Dr. Åström has supervised numerous master's theses in plant biology and biology education, with recent supervision activities spanning from 2016-2020. Her research has been supported by multiple grants including projects funded by Waldemar von Frenckells stiftelse and internal University of Helsinki initiatives. She has been principal investigator or participant in over 20 research projects since 1998, with current active projects focusing on plant life in winter and invasive species in warming climates.

She is an active member of the PECC-group (Plant Ecophysiology and Climate Change) and leads the Allium project focusing on field garlic ecology and distribution. Her work integrates field studies with laboratory analyses to understand plant adaptations to winter conditions, and she has developed extensive web-based educational materials for plant biology instruction in both Finnish and Swedish.