EnvGen

Anders Andersson (PI)

Anders received his PhD in 2005 at KTH Royal Institute of Technology after graduate studies on functional genomics on Archaea. Thereafter he conducted postdoctoral studies at the Karolinska Institute, University of California Berkeley, and Uppsala University, working on metagenomics approaches to study microbial communities of different environments (the human gut microbiota, biofilms of acid mine drainage, and bacterioplankton of lakes and the Baltic Sea). In 2010 he returned to KTH, starting his tenure track and building up the Environmental Genomics group at Science for Life Laboratory in Stockholm. In 2022 he was promoted to professor.

Krzysztof T. Jurdzinski (PhD student)

Krzysztof is interested in how evolution and ecology shape microbial genomes, diversity and functioning. Using tools of data analysis, phylogenomics and bioinformatics he wants to connect genomic changes to physiology and role in ecosystem functioning of the microbes. He has a background in biochemistry (BSc, Jagiellionian University) and finished SciLifeLab Master’s programme in Molecular Techniques in Life Science (joined between Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm University and KTH).

He joined ENVGEN first as a summer intern (2021), then for a short research project (2021-2022) and his Master’s thesis (2022). Starting from 2022, he is a PhD student in a project focused on evolution of brackish microbiome. He also studies adaptation and dispersal of bacterial in a broader context, as well as factors driving microbial diversity.

Karin Garefelt (PhD student)

Karin studies marine microbiomes in the seas around Sweden, focusing on transforming large datasets into ecological insights about plankton communities. She is working with high-throughput technologies, and combines high-throughput imaging (Imaging FlowCytobot) with metabarcoding to integrate and compare the different types of information. The research involves fieldwork on research ships, lab work and bioinformatic analysis.

Karin first joined ENVGEN for her MSc thesis in Industrial and Environmental Biotechnology at KTH, and continues the project into her PhD studies (2023-). Since January 2026, she’s been collaborating with the Baltic Sea Center to study atmospheric emissions from phytoplankton at Askö Laboratory.

Emma Bell (Postdoc)

Emma’s research explores the microbiome of natural and engineered ecosystems. She integrates meta-omics with geochemistry to understand how microorganisms (bacteria, archaea, and viruses) interact with each other and the environment. After completing her PhD in 2016 at Newcastle University, UK, she has carried out postdoctoral research at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, and the University of Calgary, Canada. She has investigated the microbiome across a range of ecosystems, linked together by the overarching themes of biogeochemical cycles, microbial ecophysiology, and live in extreme environments.

In 2022, Emma was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship to join the Environmental Genomics group at SciLifeLab. Here she researches bacteria- phage interactions and dynamics in the Baltic Sea using meta-omics approaches.