Lena Collienne has recently graduated from the University of Greifswald with an MSc degree in biomathematics. Congratulations! Greifswald is known for being the only university in Germany offering a major in biomathematics, the reason Lena has decided to study there. Lena’s thesis on the Ranked Nearest Neighbour Interchange Space of Phylogenetic Trees was awarded 1.0, the highest and rare mark in the German system. This success was followed by another wonderful distinction for Lena, the University of Otago PhD Scholarship. We are very pleased that Lena has chosen us for her PhD and warmly welcome her in beautiful Dunedin, where she has arrived after a very productive three-month long visit to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany. Lena will be working with us on online phylogenetic tree inference algorithms, and we are very excited to follow her progress in this challenging field.