Dr. Elske Tielens

Dr. Elske Tielens is a quantitative ecologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. Her work leverages radar remote sensing to help us better understand how insects move in the world and interact with the landscape. Her current work focuses on developing radar as a tool for widespread insect monitoring, to address the effects of anthropogenic change on insects at large scales. She started her career as an ecologist in the Netherlands at the University of Groningen, completed a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, USA, and spent time working as a postdoctoral researcher in Oklahoma and Georgia, USA, before coming to Switzerland. You can learn more about her work with insects here, as well as on the HiRAD project website.

Besides answering pressing ecological questions, Dr. Tielens hopes her work can inspire curiosity in the under-appreciated diversity of insects. She believes that sitting still and watching a beetle clean its antennae, or observing the big 'baskets' of pollen on a bumblebee's legs, or seeing a high-flying insect on its way to new habitat, can inspire us to see our own place as part of the natural world.