Dr. Tanja Pipan, graduated in biology, received her Ph.D. in 2003 in biology from University of Ljubljana. She is currently Research Advisor at the Karst Research Institute, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) and Professor of Biology at University of Nova Gorica. She has broad research interests in subterranean biology, especially biodiversity, biogeography, and ecosystem function. She has active research projects on subterranean biodiversity, diversity and biogeography of epikarst invertebrates, ecology of shallow subterranean habitats, their fauna and evolutionary importance, and organic carbon flux in karst. She is country coordinator for the Slovenian Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, and a member and Treasurer of the International Society for Subterranean Biology. She has organized or co-organized symposia and workshops on Long-Term Ecological Research on Karst (2006), Time in Karst (2007) and 20th International Conference on Subterranean Biology (2010). She has extensive experience with a variety of Slovenian subterranean habitats, and has done the most extensive ecological study to date of the very rich fauna found in epikarst. Results were published in refereed journals and in a monograph titeld »Epikarst – a promising habitat«. She has collaboration with many speleobiologists and karstologists around the world. With prof. David C. Culver (American University, Washington DC, USA) they have co-authored two books, both published at Oxford University Press (The Biology of Caves and Other Subterranean Habiats [2009] and Shallow Subterranean Habitats: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation [2014]). She received an award from the International Society for Subterranean Biology for best presentation at the conference in Raipur, India in 2004 and an award in 2005 for best paper at the International Association of Hydrogeology meeting in Kotar, Montenegro. She gained ZRC SAZU award for important scientific achievements in the field of research in 2003 and in 2016 Gold Medal ZRC SAZU for outstanding scientific research results. Since 2011 she is an Associate Editor for the field of biospeleology at the International Journal of Speleology. She has traveled extensively in her study of epikarst and other subsurface habitats.