Hi! I'm Elke Zeller,
Ph.D. Student, Programmer, Sailer, Scientist, and Cheese Enthusiast
About me
I am a Ph.D. student researching the fascinating intersection of paleoclimate, human evolution, and ecology. I use computer modeling, data analysis, and statistics to understand if, when, and how our ancestors were able to adapt to the changing climate and environment around them. This involves using vast amounts of data, running simulations, and analyzing the results to gain a comprehensive understanding of how our ancestors were able to survive and thrive in their environments.
My interests include paleoclimate, human migration, genetics, paleoecology, computer modeling, and phylogenetics.Read more about my research here.
In my free time, I enjoy being on the water on a sailboat or other outside activities. I find that this provides a welcome break from my research and helps me to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Selected publications
May 2023 | Science
Human adaptation to diverse biomes over the past 3 million years
Elke Zeller, Axel Timmermann, Kyung-Sook Yun, Pasquale Raia, Karl Stein, Jiaoyang Ruan
April 2022 | Nature
Climate effects on archaic human habitats and species successions
Axel Timmermann, Kyung-Sook Yun, Pasquale Raia, Jiaoyang Ruan, Alessandro Mondanaro, Elke Zeller, Christoph P. E. Zollikofer, Marcia S. Ponce de León, Danielle Lemmon, Matteo Willeit, Andrey Ganopolski
May 2021 | Scientific Reports
Tropical Indo-Pacific SST influences on vegetation variability in eastern Africa
In-Won Kim, Malte F. Stuecker, Axel Timmermann, Elke Zeller, Jong-Seong Kug, So-Won Park, Jin-Soo Kim
July 2018 | Nature
El Niño–Southern Oscillation complexity
Axel Timmermann, Soon-Il An, Jong-Seong Kug, Fei-Fei Jin, Wenju Cai, Antonietta Capotondi, Kim M. Cobb, Matthieu Lengaigne, Michael J. McPhaden, Malte F. Stuecker, Karl Stein, Andrew T. Wittenberg, Kyung-Sook Yun, ..., Elke Zeller, ...
Research
Hominin preference and adaptation to vegetation. Over the past 3 million years the climate has changed drastically which had an effect on vegetation and subsequently on the way early humans made use of this. Through adaptation and innovation the genus Homo was able to start living in almost any environment on our planet.
Downscaling climate simulations using artificial intelligence. Climate simulations can be limited in spatial resolution when conducting paleoclimate experiments. In this project, we explore using artificial intelligence to downscale paleoclimate model outputs and compare them to the regularly used statistical downscaling techniques.
Media & other
This video briefly explains our paper, "Human adaptation to diverse biomes over the past 3 million years." We looked at vegetation preferences from early hominins and found that hominins had a distinct preference for spatially diverse environments.
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