Prof LUISA ORSINI

Associate Professor in Biosystems and Environmental Change at the University of Birmingham (UoB). She uses multidisciplinary science to understand evolutionary processes and mechanisms that enable freshwater communities, responsible for delivering critical ecosystem services (e.g. clean water, nutrient cycling, food provisioning) to persist in the face of human impact. Evolution occurs on multidecadal time scales. To reconstruct long-term dynamics, Orsini applies high throughput sequencing technologies (genomics, transcriptomic, metabolomics, environmental DNA) to sedimentary archives of inland waters, which have the unique advantage of preserving biological and environmental signals temporally. These archives are the resource of ‘resurrected’ specimens of the keystone crustacean Daphnia magna (waterflea), the biological agent at the core of a novel engineering biology solution for wastewater decontamination. Orsini applies engineering biology to translate fundamental science discoveries into practical applications of wide impact. To this end, she develops biotechnologies towards process-scale surface and wastewater decontamination as well as novel tools for the cost-effective and high throughput quantification of biodiversity to guide environment agencies and policymakers in conservation strategies. By translating cutting-edge multidisciplinary science into practical applications, Orsini provides tools and processes for mitigation interventions that enable green growth and meet UN developmental goals