AWI Postdocs

Anna-Lea Golz

Coastal Ecology

Anna-Lea is excited to join the <link en science biosciences coastal-ecology.html>C<link en science biosciences coastal-ecology.html>ostal Ecology Section on Sylt, where she will be working with Karen Helen Wiltshire and Sabine Horn within the interdisciplinary DAM pilot project MGF-Nordsee, which focuses on the exclusion of mobile bottom touching fishing gear in marine protected areas of the German North Sea

She will use ecological network analysis based on data collected within the project and from monitoring programs to assess the current status of the three North Sea marine protected areas. The results will provide information about the structure and function of the food webs within the MPAs, as well as further development potential, efficiency and stability. The models will also allow to investigate the effect of mobile bottom touching fishing gear and its exclusion on food web structure and function and to identify keystone species within these systems.

Before joining AWI, Anna-Lea completed her PhD at Stockholm University, Sweden, where she investigated the effect of contaminants (mainly ionizing radiation) on the structure and function of aquatic food webs

Anna-Lea is interested in Science communication and together with a friend she started a Science/Art project, where they press and photograph different algae species. Check out her impressive artwork on Instagram at The Algarium !

Anna-Lea is located in Sylt. Contact her directly or check out her ORCID, ResearchGate, and LinkedIn profile.

Cara Nissen

Biogeosciences

Cara Nissen joined the AWI in January 2020 as part of the EU Project COMFORT, and she is working with Judith Hauck, Mario Hoppema, and Ralph Timmermann as part of the Young Investigator Group (Marine Biogeosciences).

Her main research interest lies in Southern Ocean carbon and nutrient cycling. After her master’s studies at the University of Bergen, Norway, she moved to Switzerland to do her PhD at ETH Zürich, working on the impact of phytoplankton biogeography on Southern Ocean biogeochemistry. Her current project at AWI assesses potential tipping points in Antarctic Bottom Water formation and the associated carbon sequestration as a result of changing freshwater fluxes from sea ice and ice shelves, with a particular focus on the Weddell Sea. Using model simulations with FESOM-REcoM, she focuses on the variability in dense water formation and carbon fluxes both over the historical period and in future scenarios.

Recently, she joined the postdoc team at AWI to work on topics such as equity and career development for early career scientists, as well as to engage with other postdocs at the institute. She is looking forward to interacting with many of you in the future!

Cara is an avid sport enthusiast. She loves to hike and barely brakes a sweat during Les Mills Body Attack and BodyPump Workout Classes.

Cara is located in Bremerhaven. Don’t hesitate to get in touch or check out her profile on ORCID.

Charlotte Schoonman

Glaciology

Charlotte is excited to be joining AWI’s Glaciology section in Bremerhaven through the <link en work-study jobs job-offer inspires.html _blank>INSPIRES programme, working with Olaf Eisen and Coen Hofstede.

Her research will focus on deciphering the subglacial characteristics of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica using seismic reflection profiles, as part of the ITGC-GHOST project. Thwaites Glacier is subject to significant retreat and could raise sea level by more than 3 m if it fully collapsed; however, our understanding of its basal environment is limited. Constraining subglacial properties such as bed rheology and topography would enable ice sheet modellers to make more detailed projections of the glacier’s behaviour in a warming climate.Although coronavirus has sadly delayed their field season until next year, her team are planning to conduct an extensive seismic reflection survey to image the bed and glacier interior. In the meantime, Charlotte will be honing her seismic processing skills and refining passive seismic techniques.
Charlotte is joining AWI from the Scott Polar Research Institute, where she recently completed a postdoc investigating subglacial conditions of Store Glacier, Greenland using a passive seismic network. During her doctorate at Cambridge, she investigated mantle dynamics using receiver function analysis.

She is always looking for new connections and collaborations, so if anybody is interested in working on any and all things seismic, get in touch!

Charlotte is located in Bremerhaven. Email her or check out her profile on ORCID.

Eduardo Queiroz Alves

Marine Geochemistry

At the beginning of June, AWI welcomed a new postdoctoral researcher. The recipient of a prestigious Humboldt Fellowship, Eduardo Queiroz Alves will be with us for the next two years, working in the Marine Geochemistry section and in the field of organic geochemistry. Eduardo recently completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford and, prior to starting at AWI, he undertook a short internship with the CGIAR organization in Sri Lanka and a short postdoc at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

At AWI, Eduardo will be working on an extremely timely topic: the role of permafrost thaw induced release of carbon in warming climate. He will study the rapid changes experienced by Earth’s climate in the past. Among the causes of these changes, permafrost thawing, releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, has been recognised as a major player. Throughout Earth’s history there have been several cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the last deglaciation representing the most recent phase of rapid climate warming. Taking advantage of the sedimentary record, Eduardo and the organic geochemistry team led by professor Gesine Mollenhauer will investigate a sediment record of this most recent phase of rapid climate warming, which shows enhanced terrigenous deposition in the English Channel. Their aim is to establish an accurate and robust chronological framework for this deposition and, using the technique of compound specific radiocarbon dating at AWI’s MICADAS radiocarbon dating facility, determine whether the source of this organic matter is indeed thawing permafrost, leading to an understanding of the mechanisms of permafrost carbon mobilization.

Please reach out if any of this sounds interesting to you. Other than his research interests, Eduardo is very much interested in science communication and fostering new collaborations.

Eduardo is located in Bremerhaven. Contact him here.

Florian Adolphi

Marine Geochemistry

Under the “mist” of covid-19, Florian has joined AWI’s marine geochemistry section where he will set up and lead his recently funded Helmholtz Young Investigator Group “CLOC” for the coming 6 years. He has previously been working as a PostDoc in Bern, Switzerland, and Lund, Sweden, from where he also obtained his doctorate reconstructing past changes in solar activity from ice cores, as well as their influences on climate. He has a keen interest in cosmogenic radionuclides (14C, 10Be, …) and how we can use them to learn more about (paleo-)climate dynamics, the Sun, and Earth’s magnetic field.

At AWI, his group will investigate the dynamics of past climate changes and test whether there were any leads and lags in the climate system during its major reorganizations such as Dansgaard-Oeschger Events, glacial terminations, or the mid-Pleistocene transition. They will use variations in the flux of galactic cosmic rays into the Earth’s atmosphere as an extraterrestrial clock to synchronize different climate archives from ice sheets, terrestrial records, and the world’s oceans. This way, they will diminish the typically very large chronological uncertainties that currently challenge a combined interpretation of all these records. Can we distinguish whether past climate changes were initiated in the ocean, the atmosphere, or the cryosphere? Were there early warnings signs? How did the changes propagate between different ocean basins? How can we further improve our chronologies to be able to ask new questions in paleoclimatology? These are the questions Florian and his group are excited to look at.

Generally, Florian is always interested in new collaborations and learning through them – so if any of this sounds interesting to you: Please reach out to him or check out his ORCID.

Florian is located in Bremerhaven. Contact him here.

Henrik Sadatzki

Marine Geology

Henrik is joining AWI´s Marine Geology section in Bremerhaven as new postdoctoral researcher through the AWI INSPIRES programme. He will be working with Frank Lamy and Ralf Tiedemann.

Henrik will investigate the long-term evolution and dynamics of oceanic fronts and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the Pacific Southern Ocean, and its linkages with changes in the Antarctic ice sheet, atmospheric CO2, and global climate. For this purpose, he will use sediment material obtained during the IODP Expedition 383 and generate biomarker proxy records of sea surface temperatures and phytoplankton productivity for the last eight million years.

After completion of his PhD at the University of Bergen in Norway, Henrik worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University in 2019. His previous research focussed on reconstructing the past sea ice variability in the Nordic Seas and the Southern Ocean, and investigating the role of sea ice dynamics in abrupt glacial and deglacial climate changes.

Henrik is located in Bremerhaven. Contact him directly, or check out his profile on ORCID.

Kim Vane

Polar Biological Oceanography

Kim Vane joined AWI in August 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher in the BMBF/NERC funded project Coldfish, in a workpackage led by Dr. Hauke Flores in the Polar Biology and Oceanography section. With their British colleagues at the University of Southampton and Newcastle, the project aims to investigate the effect of borealisation in the Arctic Ocean on the fitness of resident and northward-expanding fishes. Kim focuses on resource utilization and migration patterns of the ecological key species Polar cod Boreogadus saidaand its competitor Gadus morhuaby using a novel analytical approach of compound specific isotope analysis of amino acids. She is refining this approach to enable the identification of primary producers and microorganism by consumers (resource utilization) across the under ice, pelagic and benthic food web over large temporal and spatial scales. This is the next step to the snapshot information one usually gets with other biomarker and stable isotope approaches.

Kim aims to direct her future research at investigating historical samples to look at potential alterations in resource utilization and fitness by organisms to environmental change over long time periods. This can inform us on the level of adaptation by organisms to the ongoing changes in their ecosystem and how we can take measures in management and conservation. She is keen to collaborate with researchers that are interested and/or have such historical samples and urges to not throw away any organic or biogenic mineral materials.

One of her main passions next to her work is travelling to see the natural and human wonders around the world. With the progressing climate change, Kim is aiming to find ways of limited carbon emission travelling with her electric car in her free time. She is always enthusiastic to exchange ideas and have discussions on this topic.

Kim in located at AWI Bremerhaven. Contact her here, or check out her ORCID profile.

Lona van Delden

Permafrost Research

After completing her doctoral research on greenhouse gas exchange of peri-urban environments in the Australian subtropics at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Lona has worked at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, and University of Eastern Finland (UEF), Kuopio. Since her expedition to Research Station Samoylov Island in the Lena Delta of northeast Siberia (Russian Arctic) in 2019, she has discovered her passion for the rapidly changing polar regions.
Lona is now looking into the role of non-growing and shoulder season carbon and nitrogen dynamics with soil-atmosphere CO_2,CH₄, and N₂O exchange quantification in pristine northern ecosystems. The effects of soil freezing and thawing might be the key factor determining if ecosystems act as annual greenhouse gas sinks or sources. Overall, FluxWin aims to understand how now-frozen soils will respond to permafrost thaw as soils that are always frozen shift to becoming seasonally or perennially thawed with increased plant activity through earlier onset of spring and warmer winters.

Lona is located at AWI Potsdam. <link nc ueber-uns organisation mitarbeiter lona-van-delden.html _blank>Contact her directly, or check out her profile on ORCID.