I obtained my doctoral degree in Physics at Vilnius university, Lithuania. My research was primarily concerned with molecular structure analysis by the means of low temperature vibrational spectroscopy and quantum chemistry. In addition, I used spectroscopic methods on a wide variety of samples, such as food products, works of art, soils, bacteria, stem cells and various optical elements. I was also involved in education, holding lectures about optics of vision and optometry devices, and laboratory works on optics and spectroscopy. Right now, at the University of Lund, I am a postdoctoral researcher working with biological soil crusts from Arctic regions.

The Arctic is one of the most vulnerable regions in the context of climate change. Great effort is being put into understanding what effect it is having on every living organism and how the adapting organisms influence climate in return. In context of soil, the changing temperatures and extreme events mean top layers of soil experience more frequent and intense freezing and thawing events. In order to better understand how these processes affect soil microbiota, I am analyzing biological soil crusts from Disko island, Greenland – measuring soil respiration from bulk samples, as well as populating soil microchips and studying them by the means of optical microscopy and Raman microspectroscopy combined with stable isotope probing. The main goal of these experiments is to connect what happens on an individual organism level to the bigger scale of soil-environment systems.