معرفی
Laura Antão is an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, working within the Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Program. She leads a research project on biodiversity change investigation using global butterfly data, funded by the Academy of Finland (2024-2028).
Education:
- Ph.D. in Biology and Ecology of Global Change (2013-2017) from University of St Andrews, UK and University of Aveiro, Portugal
- M.Sc. in Marine Ecology (2007-2008) from University of Lisbon, Portugal
- B.Sc. in Environmental Marine Biology (2003-2007) from University of Lisbon, Portugal
As a global change ecologist, Antão specializes in biodiversity, macroecology, and global change research. She focuses on biodiversity synthesis and patterns, examining how information can be generalized across taxa, habitats, and scales. Her work analyzes biodiversity change over space and time using long-term data, linking these patterns to large-scale environmental drivers like climate and land-use. She employs advanced statistical methods to understand community dynamics and species responses to environmental change, with particular emphasis on boreal ecosystems and multi-taxa patterns.
Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on biodiversity monitoring, community dynamics under climate change, and the development of large-scale ecological databases. Her work spans theoretical ecology, applied conservation, and policy-relevant research, with increasing emphasis on temporal dynamics and extreme events in recent years.
Scientific Awards:
- Best Journal Article 2020 for Early State Researchers in the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences (2021)
- Outstanding Journal Article 2022 in the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences (2023, shared with Weigel, B.)
Antão has secured competitive research funding, currently leading an Academy Research Fellow project (2024-2028) investigating biodiversity changes using global butterfly datasets. She has supervised multiple master's theses and served on dissertation monitoring committees. Her editorial work includes significant contributions as an editor for Global Ecology and Biogeography and reviewer for Ecology Letters.
Her research is conducted through the Research Center for Ecological Change at the University of Helsinki, where she collaborates with an international network of researchers across multiple institutions. She has been instrumental in developing the BioTIME database, a major resource for biodiversity time-series analysis.
