Government appointed Tuul Sepp as new member of UT council

At the senate meeting on 25 August, the senate decided to propose to the Government of the Republic to remove Mari Moora from the University of Tartu council due to her appointment as Vice Rector for Research and to appoint Associate Professor in Animal Ecology Tuul Sepp as member of the council. The government accepted the motion at their session on 12 October.

Tuul Sepp is an active promoter of science and the author of numerous popular science articles. Sepp’s wide-ranging activities as a researcher and an advocate for science allow her to play an active role in the council of the University of Tartu.

Tuul Sepp received her PhD from the University of Tartu in 2012 and completed postdoctoral research in the USA. She has been a member of the Estonian Young Academy of Sciences (EYAS) since 2017. From 2019 to 2021, she was the Vice President of EYAS and a member of the initiative group of the Estonian Chamber of Research. Since 2019, she has been a member of the Estonian science communication task force. In July 2023, Tuul Sepp became a member of the council of the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences. She is the principal investigator in three research projects funded by the Estonian Research Council’s start-up grant, the LIFE programme and the Environmental Investment Centre. Sepp is also an experienced supervisor of doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and bachelor’s and master’s students.

She has won several research awards, including the L’Oréal Baltic and UNESCO fellowship “For Women in Science” in 2019, the Estonian President’s Young Scientist Award in 2020 and the National Research Award in Earth and Life Sciences in 2022.

The government approved the current composition of the council on 30 December 2021. Mari Moora, Professor in Community Ecology, has been Vice Rector for Research since 1 August, leading the university’s activities in basic and applied research. According to the Statutes of the University of Tartu, a council member appointed by the senate may not hold the position of the university’s vice rector at the same time. Therefore, the senate made the proposal to appoint a new council member.