Thomas Wohlgemuth elected to the WSL Directorate

The ecologist Thomas Wohlgemuth, Head of the Disturbance Ecology Research Group, will become a member of the Directorate of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL as of September 1st, 2022. The ETH Board elected him at the request of WSL Director Beate Jessel.

Thomas Wohlgemuth, 61, has worked at WSL since 1988. For thirty years, he has been studying the ecological consequences of extreme events such as windthrow, forest fires and drought, as well as the natural and experimental regeneration of forest trees.

Thomas Wohlgemuth studied biology at ETH Zurich, specialising in plant ecology, and did his doctorate at the University of Bern on the topic of "Biogeography and Biodiversity of the Swiss Flora". During his postdoc in the USA, he investigated how biodiversity can be recorded using remote sensing.

From 2000 to 2006, Wohlgemuth headed the WSL research programme Forest Dynamics. Since 2006, he has been the head of the Disturbance Ecology research group and deputy head of the Forest Dynamics research unit. Since 2022, he has been the Chair of the WSL Research Commission.

Wohlgemuth's numerous scientific and popular science publications include the UTB textbook Störungsökologie (2019) and Flora des Kantons Zürich (2020). As a member of the directorate, Wohlgemuth wants to work both for the continuity and promotion of WSL's high research standards and for the transfer of knowledge in the forest sector.