Olivier Broennimann (Staff scientist)

I have a wide range of interests in biogeography, predictive spatial ecology, niche theory and conservation biology. I'm particularly interested in assessing and understanding the impacts of global change on plant diversity, from regional to global scale. For this purpose, I develop tools to measure and test niche overlap between species, and metrics of ecological distance to characterized niche properties of particular populations (e.g. introduction of invasive species). 

I am responsible for the academic, technical and logistic support at the Ecospat lab, which includes tasks such as:

• creation and management of species databases
• creation and management of spatially-explicit environmental data
• programming and support to the use of niche & distribution modeling tools
• statistical support
• maintainer of the ecospat R library
• webmaster of the Ecospat website

2014-
Staff scientist at Ecospat

2009 - 2014 Postdoc at the Universiy of Lausanne, Deaprtment of Ecology & Evolution, within the framework of the National Center for Competence in Research "Plant Survival", Workpackage 3 on "Spread and impact of invasive plants".

2008-2009
Postdoc at the State University of New-York (SUNY), at Stony Broke, in the lab of Prof. Catherine Graham

2005 - 2008
PhD thesis supervised by Antoine Guisan, UNIL. "Niche-based models in biogeography & conservation biology: how far can we go to assess the impacts of global change?"

2005
Scientific collaborator. 3D Photo-interpretation and cartography of alluvial areas of national importance in Switzerland. Federal Office for the Environment, Service Conseil Zones Alluviales, Yverdon, Switzerland.

2004 - 2005
Scientific collaborator. Modeling of the distribution of Southern African taxa by 2050. Supervision by Dr. Wilfried Thuiller, Kirstenbosch Research Center (SANBI), Cape Town, South-Africa.

2003 - 2004
Scientific collaborator. Modeling of the distribution of Ilex gender (Aquifoliacea) / Morphological discrimination of the Ilex species of South America (multivariate statistical analyses), supervised by Dr. Pierre-André Loizeau, Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, Geneva, Switzerland.

2003 - 2004
Scientific collaborator. Field surveys and habitat modeling for the Eryngium Project in the Swiss Alps. Supervision by Prof. Antoine Guisan, UNIL.

2002 - 2003
Master thesis on "modeling of the distribution of rare and endangered plant species", supervised by Prof. Antoine Guisan, UNIL.

1997 - 2002
Studies in Biology at UNIL.

1994 - 1997
Baccalaureate in Sciences at the Gymnasium of CESSEV (Burier, Switzerland).