Meet our new curators

With a grand new National Museum for Nature and a new home for research, public engagement, and Denmark’s largest museum collection, there is a lot to take care of. We need to secure the best foundation for a sustainable future, contribute with essential knowledge to deal with the current biodiversity and climate crises, and inspire children and young adults to take part in creating positive change for life on Earth. Deeply rooted in cutting-edge museum science and a great commitment to share scientific knowledge with the world, our new curators will be part of an interdisciplinary community applying the newest methods and technologies in the fields of palaeontology, botany, zoology, and digital natural history.

Laura Cotton is new Tenure Track Assistant Professor and Curator (Palaeontology). Her educational background is from Oxford University and Cardiff University, and a museum background from Naturalis Biodiversity Centre and Florida Museum of Natural History. Her research focuses on understanding responses of shallow marine ecosystems  under rapid climate change. She has conducted field work in Tanzania, Madagascar, Armenia, and the U.S. Gulf coast. She starts 1 September 2021. Follow Laura on Twitter

Mark Scherz is new Tenure Track Assistant Professor and Curator (Vertebrate Zoology). His educational background is from University of Edinburgh and Ludwig-Maximillians Universität München. He studies reptiles and amphibia to explore questions in macroevolution, convergent evolution, and speciation. Earlier this year he received CETAF’s award for Excellence in Scientific Collections-based Research. He starts 1 September 2021. Follow Mark on Twitter

Natasha de Vere is new Associate Professor and Curator (Botany). She comes from a position as Head of Science at the National Botanic Garden of Wales and Senior Lecturer at Aberystwyth University. In her research she focuses on conservation of plants and pollinators. She is using genomic tools, computer vision, and machine learning to accelerate the use of herbarium specimens for answering questions in plant ecology and conservation. She starts 1 September 2021. Follow Natasha on Twitter

Kim Steenstrup Pedersen is new Professor in Computer Vision and Digital Natural History, and Curator (Digital Collections). He is appointed in a newly established shared full professorship between the Natural History Museum of Denmark and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. He will head a new section for digitising the museum’s 14 million specimens. His research focuses on how to make computers perceive and interpret image data through computer vision, machine learning and digital 3D reconstruction, and how to develop new technologies for species identification and digitisation of museum collections. He starts 1 August 2021.