I am a postdoc working together with Prof. Franciska de Vries in investigating the effects of drought on plant-soil feedback. I’m originally from Brazil, where I did my Bachelor in Biology and a Master in Ecology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre. For my Master’s thesis, I have studied functional patterns of woody plant communities along regional climate and soil gradients. This was the starting point to a growing interest in the belowground world and its importance for plant community dynamics. To continue in this line of research, I moved to Switzerland to do a PhD at ETH Zürich under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Levine studying the role of plant-soil interactions for diversity maintenance in a phosphorus poor mountain grassland. I am currently interested in investigating how global change, drought, in particular, will affect plants species ability to coexist through its impact not only on the soil community but also on nutrient cycling.