Academic interests
Benedicte is an evolutionary biologist with a great interest in genomics. After finishing her master's, where she made the first chromosome level whole-genome assemblies of the species pair the European river lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis) and brook lamprey (Lampetra planeri), she went on to work for the Norwegian branch of one of the world's largest reference genome initiatives, the Earth Biogenome Project. Here, she worked as a bioinformatician, and in addition to creating whole-genome assemblies for a range of different species, she held workshops about the assembly and curation process. Benedicte is also passionate about science communication. She is the course coordinator for the largest science communication course at the University of Oslo (MNKOM3000/4000), where she teaches bachelor and master students from all STEM-fields how to communicate their work to a broad audience, through popular science articles, podcasts, debates, infographics, and stage shows. In addition to this, she has also written a childrens book, "Verdens rareste dyr" ("The worlds strangest animals"), about how the strangest animals are sometimes the ones with the most exciting evolutionary secrets. As a PhD student in the SERG group, she is currently working on the ICEFISH project, where she will explore the role of gene flow in the adaptive radiation of Antarctic icefishes.
Background
University of Oslo, Norway | Since 2023
Course coordinator for MNKOM3000/4000 at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Kagge Publishing, Norway | Since 2022
Author
University of Oslo, Norway | 2022-2023
Department engineer at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, for Earth Biogenome Project Norway
Education
University of Oslo, Norway | Since 2023
PhD thesis at the Natural History Museum
University of Oslo, Norway | 2020-2022
Master studies in Bioscience, Ecology and Evolution
University of Oslo, Norway | 2018-2020
Bachelor studies in Bioscience