Molecular biologist by training, driven by a desire to better understand the interplay between the microbial world and ecosystem-level ecological dynamics — and how life and environment continuously shape one another. During his PhD in environmental microbiology at ETH Zürich, he investigated the environmental drivers structuring microbial communities in low-biomass oceanic sediment samples, using multivariate statistical approaches.

The growing pressure on natural resources and the ongoing biodiversity crisis led him to focus on how anthropogenic environmental changes alter animal community structure and their associated viral and microbial communities. His research focuses on how habitat alteration shapes the distribution and diversity of small mammals – specifically bats and small terrestrial mammals – and, in turn, how these shifts influence the presence and spread of infectious agents. His approach relies on investigating natural systems that can act as landscape laboratories – exploiting human-induced modifications to gain an understanding of the ecological processes governing spillover events.

In 2020, he joined the group of Fabian Leendertz at the Robert Koch Institute to pursue these questions directly. There, he coordinated the BIODIV-AFREID project activities in Côte d'Ivoire, where, together with Dr. Leonce Kouadio, he established and led four consecutive years of field sampling (from 2021 to 2024 - small mammals and environmental samples) in the Taï National Park and surrounding villages. When the group moved to the newly founded Helmholtz Institute for One Health, he continued coordinating the field and laboratory activities under the BCOMING project.

Underlying all of this is a fundamental conceptual issue: biodiversity is widely used as a proxy for environmental health, yet more diverse ecosystems may not necessarily be safer from a zoonotic risk perspective. How effectively can existing biodiversity indices capture the dimensions of environmental health that matter most? His work engages critically with these questions — comparing indices, aligning survey methods with specific research questions and target communities, and interrogating whether our current metrics are genuinely fit for purpose.

Together with Dr. Livia Patrono, he is in charge of Output IV of the BMBF-funded INFORBIO project — a highly interdisciplinary initiative led by WWF Germany aimed at improving the livelihoods of indigenous local communities in remote areas of Cameroon and the Central African Republic, where HIOH is responsible for implementing an early warning system for zoonoses.

He leads the fieldwork and laboratory components of the VolkswagenStiftung-funded "BehaviorChange" project — a collaboration with the Dakar Veterinary School, the University of Abidjan, and the Senckenberg Museum Görlitz, among others — aimed at characterising bushmeat consumption and associated infectious agents in Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, using eDNA approaches.