Alumni
Visiting PhD Student
Alumni
I became interested in coral reefs after seeing an aquarium with live corals and tropical reef fish at an early age. Then I decided I wanted to pursue a career as a researcher in Marine Biology. I got accepted into the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in 2008 studying general Marine Biology and Ecology & Evolution. During my MSc in Marine Biology I could specify on coral reef ecology and focus on ex situ coral reef research. In my main MSc thesis, I focused on the effects of elevated irradiance on bleaching susceptibility of Stylophora pistillata. Then, in 2014 I was introduced to the wonderful world of molecular ecology. I'm now pursuing a PhD in molecular microbial coral reef ecology at the University of Bremen (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Christian Wild in close collaboration with Prof. Christian Voolstra's Reef Genomics lab at KAUST. Our project, called the NICE project (NItrogen Cycling in coral reef Environments), aims to qualify and quantify nitrogen cycling pathways in the main functional groups of a coral reef both molecularly and physiologically.
My research interests lie in marine biology and especially coral reef ecology and conservation. I am interested how abiotic factors, such as light, temperature and nutrient availability, affect holobiont fitness and/or the holobiont microbiome using molecular and physiological techniques (in situ and ex situ).
British Ecological Society
Red Sea Research Centre, Reef Genomics