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Faculty and Research Fellow, University of East Anglia

Key research interests:
Environmental and functional genomics of marine microbial organisms; metagenomics of the upper ocean; physiological adaptation; diatom biology; photosynthesis; polar biology; biochemistry; biological oceanography.

I obtained my degree in Biology with emphasis on Biological Oceanography at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel and the PhD at Bremen University (Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research), Germany. Before joining the UEA, most of my PostDoc research was conducted with a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the School of Oceanography, University of Washington (EV Armbrust lab) in joint cooperation with the Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin (MR Sussman lab), USA.

I am a member of several genome projects with marine microalgae (e.g. diatoms) and bacteria and conducted transcriptome analysis with diatoms using microarrays and expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in order to find the molecular basis of adaptation to environmental conditions. A crucial part of this research is the identification of metabolic pathways (e.g carbon fixation, silicon bioprocesses in diatoms) and their key regulatory components (e.g. DNA-binding proteins) to find mechanisms on how these organisms sense changes in environmental conditions. This fundamental knowledge about microbes from the upper ocean will help to interpret future responses to global change.

Experience

  • –present
    Faculty and Research Fellow, University of East Anglia