Eveline Pinseel

Prof. Eveline Pinseel is a junior professor and ERC grant holder affiliated with the Laboratory of Protistology & Aquatic Ecology at Ghent University. Her research aims to uncover the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape the diversification, biogeography, and adaptive potential of diatoms. To this end, she applies a wide variety of approaches, from microscopy to omics techniques.

The ecological significance of diatoms, the most biodiverse algal lineage on Earth, cannot easily be overstated. Primary production by diatoms is tightly integrated with aquatic food webs, energy fluxes, biogeochemical cycles, and, ultimately, Earth’s climate. Despite their ecological importance, the evolutionary underpinnings of the remarkable diversification of diatoms are still little understood. Here, I aim to highlight how the advent of molecular techniques revealed how massively we have been underestimating diatom diversity. Furthermore, I aim to show how recent advances in diatom genomics finally enable us to unravel how diatom lineages originate and diverge in heterogenous environments.