Sven Batke

Sven Batke joined Edge Hill University in 2017 as Lecturer in Biology. In 2015 he received his PhD in Tropical Plant Ecology from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His work focused on how high-intensity weather events such as hurricanes can alter tropical epiphytic forest communities.

Following on from this, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow under the mentorship of Prof. Jennifer McElwain at the University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, where he supported her team as an ecophysiologist and data analyst on a €1.6M Science Foundation Ireland funded research project.

His work focused on how future predicted changes in climate will affect plant-atmospheric water feedbacks. Some of his work included running multiple physiological plant growth chamber experiments at the UCD Programme for Experimental Atmospheres and Climate (Péac) facility and the analysis of physiological data from Community Land Model simulations. In 2016 he then secured an Irish Research Council Fellowship to investigate how increases in atmospheric CO2 will alter water-relations in tropical epiphytes in the future. Sven’s general research interests include plant ecology and physiology, climate modelling and global change.