Elena Kost

Research Interests

My research interest focuses on better understanding the impact of climate change and global diversity loss on soils, their chemistry, biology, and ecosystem functions such as climate regulation and nutrient cycling.
I gained my first research experience as a bachelor student in the DIGGING DEEPER program at the Agroscope research institute. This project looked at the importance of biodiversity for the provisioning of ecosystem services and stability. After that, I did my master thesis in the ROOTPHENOBIOME project, where I studied the microbial communities associated with maize roots to improve nitrogen uptake efficiency of maize plants.
My current PhD project is part of the MICROSERVICES project that aims at predicting climate change impacts on the crop microbiome and its cascading effects on ecosystem services delivery in agroecosystem together with my supervisors Dr. Martin Hartmann, Dr. Jochen Mayer and Prof. Dr. Johan Six, and in collaboration with an international and multidisciplinary European consortium. My work will focus on the effect of drought on soil microbial diversity using molecular tools such as metabarcoding and metagenomics by using an in-situ climate manipulation experiment in the DOK long-term agricultural field trial. Furthermore, MICROSERVICES will make use of a natural European climate gradient to predict the influence of future climate change on soil microbial diversity.

Education

In progress: Ph.D. Environmental System Science, ETH Zurich
2021 M.Sc. Agricultural Science, ETH Zurich
2019 B.Sc. Agricultural Science, ETH Zurich