Dr. Cécile Cathalot is a research scientist at Ifremer, a French research institute for marine research and exploration. Part of the Laboratory of Metallogeny and Geochemistry, she focuses on the biogeochemistry of hydrothermal vents using both experimental and numerical approaches. For the past two years, along with her collaborators at Ifremer and IUEM (European Institute for Marine Research), she has been very dedicated in deploying and developing in situ technologies to measure specific chemicals in seawater and trace the hydrothermal activity. The data obtained feed a biogeochemical model of hydrothermal vents, currently under development here at Ifremer with her post-doc Antoine Perhirin.
She has an engineering degree in Water and Waste Water management (2006) from the French National Engineering School for Water and Environment (ENGEES, France, Strasbourg) and a PhD in Marine Geochemistry (2009) from the University of Paris VI, France. During her PhD years she studied the export of carbon by rivers to the coastal ocean, and its impact on benthic geochemistry. After she completed her PhD, she moved to the Netherlands to take up a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at NIOZ (2010-2012), where she worked on a newly emerging technique of aquatic Eddy Correlation to measure benthic fluxes on very hard substrates: she was hence able to demonstrate the important role of cold water corals on benthic ecosystems. Later, she moved back to France for a post-doctoral fellowship at Ifremer (2012-2014) where she started to work on cold seep and hydrothermal environments. During these years, she got the opportunity to see live images on various Mid-Atlantic Ridge vents sites from Ifremer Remotely Operated Vehicle, Victor 6000, during several scientific cruises. Since then, she has gotten a research position at Ifremer and carries on her work on hydrothermal systems.
Apart from science, Cécile Cathalot loves rock climbing and kitesurfing.
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