Honghong Li

Honghong Li joined GEDB as a postdoctoral researcher from November 2022 and works within the Global Health and Biosphere Stewardship theme.

With a background in biodiversity studies, running from microorganisms to grassland to forests, she is now excited to work as an interdisciplinary researcher and link human health and wellbeing to biodiversity. Honghong is working within a project exploring the existing evidence for the “biodiversity hypothesis”, which states that loss of biodiversity (e.g. declining microbial diversity) or reduced contact with biodiversity leads to declines in health and wellbeing (e.g. through immune dysfunction). Honghong is now developing a systematic protocol to mapping out the existing evidence of biodiversity impacts on human health and wellbeing. By looking at the relationship between biodiversity and human health from different aspects and synthesize the evidence that is provided in published scientific literature in a systematic way, she aims to draw a fuller picture of the current state of our knowledge on this topic.

Honghong holds a PhD degree in Environmental Microbiology from Helsinki University. Before joining GEDB, Honghong worked as a research scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). She has been working together with multidisciplinary experts from microbiology, agriculture, forestry, climate change, and modelling. She enjoys GEDBs transdisciplinary and collaborative research approach.