Research

I am an Academy Research Fellow at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki, where my fellowship project focuses on the evolution of ageing. More broadly, I work as a theoretical evolutionary ecologist studying the evolution of ageing, menopause, mutation rate evolution, human life history, sex differences in immunity, and the demographic and evolutionary consequences of cooperation and conflict.

My undergraduate training was in theoretical physics and applied mathematics (stochastic processes) at Tallinn University and Utrecht University. I obtained my Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Jyväskylä in 2017, focusing on social behaviour, followed by five years of postdoctoral research on life history evolution at the University of Lausanne. I then held an independent research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), where I contributed to evolutionary game theory applications and began working on human life history evolution. In September 2024, I started my own research group as an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. Since 2026, I also lead the interdisciplinary consortium “Sex Differences in Immunity” at the University of Helsinki, funded by an Interdisciplinary Research Opening grant and spanning evolutionary biology, immunology, medicine and demography.

My current research follows four main directions. First, my Academy Research Fellowship focuses on the evolution of ageing, investigating how germline maintenance, metabolic constraints, and negative senescence evolve. This work aims to develop a more unified understanding of the mechanisms underlying patterns of senescence across species. Second, I investigate human life history evolution, focusing on the role of kin selection and intergenerational transfers in shaping life history strategies. Third, I study how phenotypic plasticity influences life history trait evolution. Fourth, I study why immune function differs between the sexes, combining evolutionary models of age-structured populations with statistical analysis of immune markers across human populations.