UT Professor of Evolutionary Plant Ecology

Marina Semtšenko graduated from the University of Tartu in 2004 with a degree in biology and continued her studies in the master's program in plant ecology and ecophysiology.

​

During her doctoral studies in 2005-2007, she did a research at the University of Sussex in England.

​

She defended her doctoral dissertation "Plant root behaviour responses to neighbours and physical obstructions." in 2008 at University of Tartu.​

​

In 2007-2015 she worked as a researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences of the University of Tartu and then from 2015-2020 as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Manchester's Soil and Ecosystem Ecology Lab.

​

2020 Marina Semtšenko was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, after which she returned to the University of Tartu and initially starterd working as senior researcher and then as an associate professor of Plant Ecology.

​

Since 2022 she is working as  a professor of Evolutionary Plant Ecology. Her main field of research is plant adaptation with  environmental conditions. in her current work she focuses in the relationship between plants and soil microbes and how the chemical compounds released from plant roots are affecting these relationships.

​

In 2022 she received a grant from the European Research Council, on the basis of which Marina Semtšenko and her team investigate how the changes in land use during the last century have affected grassland plants and soil microbes and their ability to adapt to climate change.

​