We are please to announce that SSI Fellow Gergana Daskalova has received a Schmidt Science Fellowship.

The Fellowship is awarded to early-career scientists committed to harnessing interdisciplinary science to make a positive difference in the world. It provides the world’s best-emerging scientists with new skills and perspectives to develop novel solutions to society’s challenges, become scientific and societal thought leaders, and accelerate ground-breaking discoveries. 

Gergana has been studying the individual and cumulative impact of human activities on global biodiversity, exploiting the recent revolution in the availability of ecological data. As a Schmidt Science Fellow, she now plans to integrate remote sensing, data science, and human demography to explore the impact of abandoned land on diversity and conservation efforts. As the world’s population increasingly migrates to cities, more land is being abandoned, but we currently do not know if this is a threat or an opportunity for nature. Gergana hopes that her research can chart new directions for biodiversity conservation and will set out to determine how and where abandoned land can create healthy ecosystems and preserve nature.

Gergana said:

For me, this fellowship is an opportunity to channel my quantitative expertise, ambition for social good and personal experiences of land abandonment into impactful collaborative research upon which I can build the rest of my academic career.

Read more about the Fellowship here.