dr. JA (Julian) Helfenstein

Addressing global environmental challenges requires bringing together different scientific disciplines and stakeholders from outside academia. That is why my research and education focuses on building bridges between scientific disciplines and non-academic stakeholders to find real-world solutions. 

My research is on finding solutions for healthy agricultural soils at different spatial scales. I work with farm management and soil monitoring data at the European scale to determine how farm management impacts soil health across different geographic regions, and how that interacts with agricultural production. One key challenge for healthy agricultural soils is phosphorus. While crops need phosphorus to grow, many agricultural areas face the challenge of high fertilizer inputs and pollution of water bodies. I'm working to improve spatial and temporal information on soil phosphorus availability to improve management of phosphorus resources. Another key challenge, especially in the Netherlands, are carbon emissions and land subsidence of peat soils. Here I am exploring the potential of wet agriculture (namely rice cultivation) as a solution to produce food in a future-proof way. 

I joined the SGL group in November 2022 after three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Agroscope, Switzerland. I received my PhD in 2019 from ETH Zürich.