Hi, welcome to my website!

My name is Kasia Ziemińska and I am a functional plant anatomist interested in how wood anatomy determines plant functions and ecological strategies.

Currently (2021-2023), I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow based at AMAP, Montpellier, France. I study how tropical trees coordinate their wood anatomy with organ structure and tree architecture.

Previously, I trained as wood anatomist at Kew Gardens (London, UK) in 2008. Afterwards, I did my PhD on anatomical drivers of wood density variation across a diverse group of Australian angiosperms (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 2014). I worked on the anatomy of tropical woods from Ghana and Malaysia as part of the large project aiming at quantifying functional variation in tropical ecosystems (Oxford University, 2015/16). In 2016, I was awarded an independent postdoctoral Putnam Fellowship where I focused on wood water storage, capacitance and their anatomical underpinnings across a broad range of temperate angiosperms (Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Boston USA, 2016-2018). In 2020-2021, as a postdoctoral fellow at Uppsala University, I investigated wood anatomical responses to major hurricane in trees from Puerto Rican rainforest. Please see my CV for more details.

I am also interested in graphic design and my selected work can be viewed here.

You might wonder what the photo at the top of the page illustrates. It is a cross-section through a twig of prickly geebung, a shrub from Tasmania (Australia). The large white holes transport water, similar to pipes in a building. And the pink small cells give mechanical support, similar to bricks in a building.

Enjoy!

Kasia