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A short story of me and my work...

(a bit of past, present and future)

    Biology and nature conservation have always been my passion :-) I have started working on environmental protection/nature conservation projects already in high school. The two most important and successful ones I have taken part are the Sóstó és Homokbánya Cleaning and Protection Programme in Székesfehérvár, Hungary organised by the newly forming Gaja - Nature Conservation Association in 1990-1993 and the nature conservation work in the Dinnyési Marshes near Lake Velence and the Velence Lake Bird Reserve in Hungary between 1990-1993. Now, all these Protected Areas are part of the Danube-Ipoly National Park Directorate in Hungary.

    I started my studies in Kraków, Poland at the Jagiellonian University in 1994, as a beneficent of the Stipend for Foreigners with Polish Ancestors funded by the Polish Ministry of Education. During my studies, my interest turned towards mammalian reproductive biology, a topic that connects a wide range of research. It was then quite natural, that I joined the team of Prof. Anna Marchlewska-Koj at the University (former Dept. of Mammalian Reproduction, Institute of Zoology, UJ), which was dealing with reproduction, communication and behaviour of mainly small mammals (voles, mice, rats). I have successfully defended my Master’s Thesis dealing with mother-infant ultrasonic communication in lab mice under Marchlewska-Koj’s supervision (1999).

    I have, then, applied for the Stipend of the Hungarian Ministry of Education for PhD students studying abroad and was granted a 3+1 year scholarship (starting in 1999 - At that time our Department had moved to the newly formed Institute of Environmental Sciences) to prepare and defend my Ph.D. Thesis (2004). As my Thesis’s topic, I have chosen to continue the research I started as a student. Altogether, for almost 7 years I have conducted research on ultrasonic communication of small mammals (bank voles and lab mice), putting special emphasis on sound and chemical communication between mother and infant and later on male-female interactions. I have gained experience in sound analysis and behavioural observations. I have also taken part in taking care of the breeding colony of bank voles and laboratory mice kept at the Department and learned the ups and downs of doing research on lab animals.  I have learnt that the saying “Even in the mostly rigidly controlled laboratory conditions the animal will do, what it damn well pleases” is actually true. :-)

During my PhD, I was invited to the Russian Academy of Science for joint research on the behaviour of Palearctic species of hamsters and spent two weeks in the Tchernogolovka biological station near Moscow. I was studying the vocalisation of two sympatrically occurring species: the Eversmann hamster Allocricetulus eversmann and the Grey hamster Cricetulus migratorius under the supervision of Dr. Alexey V.Surov from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, RAS.

  As a PhD student, in my spare time during vacation (2001, 2002, 2003), I  was also participating in research on flycatchers and tits on the island of Gotland, Sweden as a field assistant of Prof. Lars Gustafsson (Dept. Animal Ecology, Uppsala University, Sweden) and Prof. Mariusz Cichoń (Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University). This work allowed me to learn the pitfalls of fieldwork (also waking up regularly at 4. a.m.) and have an insight into life-history research conducted on birds.

    Besides strictly scientific work, as a PhD student, I helped in the organisation of the 9th Chemical Signals in Vertebrates Conference in Kraków in 2000. As a "by-product" of organising this event I have also done most of the  technical edition of the Conference Proceedings published in the form of a book, titled "Chemical Signals in Vertebrate IX", by Kluwer/Academic Publisher

     After defending my Ph.D. Thesis I was employed by Prof. Michał Woyciechowski (former Dept. of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of  Environmental Sciences, UJ) as an assistant in the 6th FP EU project titled: ALARM (2004). This cooperation allowed me to take part in research on various behavioural ecology topics. Our team has conducted experiments and observations on the biodiversity of pollinators (mainly bees), parasitological studies connected with life history research on honey bees and bumblebees, heavy metal pollution effects on pollinators, effects of landscape structure on pollinator abundance and also the biology and population ecology of Maculinea butterflies (project MacMan, 5th FP EU). These studies were an excellent way of gaining new experience both in the field and in the lab.

   Additionally, staying in my Alma Mater gave me a chance to still cooperate in sound communication studies, conducted not only on small mammals (with Dr. Joanna Kapusta), but also widening my horizons, and working with bird-song analysis together with Dr. Joanna Rutkowska (Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University).  To have a break from field and lab work I was helping in the organisation of the 2005 ESEB Conference held at our Institute.

    Presently, I am employed on behalf of two research groups (Group of Behavioural Ecology and Environmental Education Research Team) in an EU project from the 7th FP called SCALES dealing with scale-related biodiversity conservation problems. Parallel to my work in SCALES I am also taking part in our Group's latest EU project STEP (7th FP). 

    In November 2013 I was nominated on behalf of Poland to the Management Committee of the SuperB project funded by the EU's oldest framework programme the COST Action.

    I was also a member of the local organizing committee for the International Congress of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry held in Kraków in 2015.

    In June 2014 I was nominated by the Hungarian government as a Lead Author to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) thematic assessment. IPBES was established in April 2012, as an independent intergovernmental body open to all member countries of the United Nations, committed to building IPBES as the leading intergovernmental body for assessing the state of the planet's biodiversity, its ecosystems and the essential services they provide to society. The Assessment was published online in November 2016.

After finalizing the EU project SCALES, starting from  1. October 2014 (until March 2019) I joined the newly created research team led by Adam Tofilski at the University of Agriculture in Kraków, Department of Pomology and Apiculture, financed by the NCN grant "Asymetria kierunkowa skrzydeł pszczoły miodnej" (Directional asymmetry of the honey bee wings) UMO-2013/10/E/NZ9/00682. Although changed my working address I also closely cooperate with Prof. Michał Woyciechowski's research group at UJ. 

In 2016 I became an expert in BES-Net (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Network) hosted by the UNDP. The same year I received financing from the National Science Center for my project entitled "The effect of heavy metal and aromatic hydrocarbon pollution of the environment on the quality of honey bees and red mason bees" planned to run for 3 years (2017-2021).

End of 2017 Greenpeace has invited me to become one of the authors of the Polish National Pollinator Protection Strategy prepared for the Ministry of Agriculture. Unfortunately, the document did not receive the Ministry`s acceptance. In 2020 I have also co-authored the updated version of the same Strategy.

On 16th April 2019  I received my habilitation in biology from the Faculty of Biology at the Jagiellonian University and starting from July 2019 I returned to the Jagiellonian University, to my Alma Mater, this time permanently, to the Institute of Botany as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant Ecology. 

At the same time I have received funding from the Biodiversa 2018-2019 EU Joint Call for the project VOODOO: Viral ecO-evOlutionary Dynamics of wild and domestic pOllinatOrs under global change coordinated by Adam Vanbergen (INRAE). 

In 2023 I was invited to prepare a proposal (VALOR: VALues and dependence of society on pollinatORs) under the coordination of Tom Breeze from Reading University, UK, which successfully received funding from the HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-01-3. Our project started in 2025. 01. 01.