Committee

Ken H Andersen
Technical University of Denmark
I want to understand how life in the ocean is organized, why marine organisms look and act the way they do, and how marine ecosystems react to perturbations like fishing, species removals/invasions or climate change.

Thomas Kiørboe
Technical University of Denmark
Plankton play a crucial role in the planet’s carbon cycle and our climate, but their behavior is limited by the dynamics of fluids and the diffusion of substances in a way that we often cannot understand with our intuition. I try to understand the basic mechanisms that regulate the carbon cycle, the exchange of substances between the organisms in plankton and the production of fish in the sea.

Emily Zakem
Carnegie Institution for Science
I use theory and mathematical models to understand how microbial ecology drives carbon, nitrogen, and other elemental cycling. My research seeks to develop broadly applicable models of microbial populations, grounded in underlying chemical and physical constraints, to robustly predict the biogeochemistry of past, present, and future environments

David Talmy
University of Tennessee
I am interested in understanding principles in marine microbial ecosystems. I develop mathematical models which encapsulate the physiology, metabolism, and ecological interactions among diverse microbial groups including bacteria, phytoplankton, and viruses. I use these models to explore emergence of system structure within environmental contexts. I test understanding of microbial systems by interpreting model solutions in the context of laboratory and observational data.

Andre W Visser
Technical University of Denmark
My interests lie at the intersection of ocean physics, ecology, and biogeochemistry. In particular, I want to understand how the oceans and the life it supports impacts the Earth System, and its response to anthropogenic forcing.

Andrew Barton
University of California San Diego
I investigate how changes in Earth’s climate, including natural variability and long-term changes driven by human activities, have the potential to alter phytoplankton species distributions and community composition. My research seeks to map the distribution of phytoplankton species in the ocean, and illuminate the fundamental biological and ecological processes that underpin these patterns.

Ben Ward
University of Southampton
My research is directed towards a mechanistic understanding of marine plankton communities. Such systems are highly complex, with global impacts determined by the interaction of innumerable microscopic individuals. It is impossible to identify and describe each individual component, and so I have sought to develop models that capture the key physiological and ecological rules of organization.

Daniel Ottmann
Technical University of Denmark
My research seeks to understand how food webs shape the structure and functions of marine ecosystems.

Camila Serra Pompei

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
I am interested in how plankton communities drive marine food webs and global biogeochemical cycles.