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Fanny Girard is a third-year Ph.D. student in Dr. Charles Fisher’s lab at the Pennsylvania State University. As part of her thesis, she has been looking at the long-term impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on deep-sea coral communities in the Gulf of Mexico using imaging methods. She is mainly focusing on understanding processes … Continued

Dr. Chuck Fisher is a deep-sea biologist whose research interests include the physiology of animals harboring chemoautotrophic symbionts, and the ecology of the communities that they often dominate. He has worked extensively with submersible and robotic vehicles to study these communities in their natural habitats around hydrothermal vents and cold seeps all over the world. Dr. … Continued

Jessica Panzarino is in her second year of graduate school at Harvard University in Prof. Peter R. Girguis’s lab.  She studies chemosynthetic symbiosis at hydrothermal vents.  In particular, she is interested in how symbiotic associations can expand the metabolic repertoire for the organisms involved.  She is also fascinated in how the metabolic processes of microbes … Continued

Dr. Cherisse Du Preez studies the deep-sea spatial ecology of hydrothermal vents. She uses two- and three-dimensional imaging to study the very fine spatial distribution of vent animals in response to physical and chemical environmental conditions (at a centimeter scale). This research will help identify the required living conditions of these unique animal assemblages, proving … Continued

Arunima Sen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate (CAGE), located more than 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. She received her BA in Biology from Earlham College and her PhD from Pennsylvania State University, where she studied community dynamics and temporal change in Western Pacific hydrothermal vents … Continued

Kevin Köser is a senior researcher at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. His main research interest lies in novel, automated, camera-based measurement techniques and methodologies for investigating (deep) sea environments and processes. These help to explore, map and monitor (deep) sea habitats, to study phenomena or resources, or to assess … Continued

Rachel Boschen is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Rachel’s current project is investigating the functional ecology of hydrothermal vent communities. What an organism does in an environment, its ‘function’, is increasingly important in understanding how communities work and how sensitive they are to disturbance. Hydrothermal vents experience natural disturbance … Continued

Alexander Duda received his diploma in Mechanical Engineering (mechatronics) from the University of Darmstadt, Germany in 2009. He is currently employed at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Bremen finishing his doctoral degree with the focus on underwater multimodal 3D reconstruction using opti-acoustic sensors. Alexander has over 7 years of experience in the … Continued

Cardinia Funganitao is a native Tongan. She attended the University of the South Pacific (Fiji & Vanuatu Campus) for undergraduate education She graduated with a Bachelor of Art majoring in Law and Geography. Part of her research experience, she undertook research on Kava Production (Livelihood of the people of Eua island) and research on the … Continued

Having a passionate interest in filmproduction since his teenage years, Björn Kurtenbach started his career in 2004 by absolving a 3-year education at the national Broadcast Company NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) in Hamburg, northern Germany. He finished his education summa cum laude as best in his class in northern Germany, as distinguished by the german Handelskammer. … Continued