Our Team

Current Lab Members

Former members

For more information please click on the photos

Guest researchers

Anna Berezkina
Since 2023 MSC4Ukraine fellowship at AWI with secondments at GEOMAR (supervision by Marlene Wall). 2022-2023: Postdoc in the research at AWI through Helmholtz “Microbial biodiversity of the cold-water coral Desmophyllum dianthus”. Scientific Interests Biodiversity and population genetics of benthic organisms and its interaction with marine microbiota, Ecology of cold-water corals, Phylogeny and morphology of cold-water prokaryotes, Microbial association, microbial function, antibiotic resistance.

Master / -Bachelor students

Albert Marpert BSc student (supervision: Leon Steiner)

Marla Dohrn Master thesis: Niche separation of benthic deep-sea holobionts in the north-west Atlantic assessed by quantification and spatial extrapolation of the amoA gene (supervision: Prof. Dr. Ute Hentschel Humeida)

Franziska Theising Master thesis: A biogeographic study on the distribution of the cosmopolitan sponge Stylocordyla borealis by integrative taxonomy and microbial fingerprinting (supervision: Prof. Dr. Ute Hentschel Humeida)

Samantha Chase Master thesis: Exploring marine plastic degradation potential in the bacterial order Pseudomonadales (supervision: Dr. Erik Borchert)

Andrés Rufino-Navarro Master thesis: Influence of photosymbionts on the survival of the larvae from the sea urchin Arbacia lixula (Supervisor: Dr. Tyler Carrier)

Onur Turak Master thesis: Identification of bacterial poly(ethylene terephthalate)-degrading enzymes from marine metagenomes (supervision: Dr. Erik Borchert)

Janis Müller Master thesis: Bacterial carbon uptake and respiration in the Baltic Sea sponge Halichondria panicea: natural vs. aquaria conditions (supervision: Angela Marulanda)

Denisse Verkovitch Master thesis: Plastic degrading potential of the bacterial order Enterobacterales (supervision: Dr. Erik Borchert)

Maëlle Zonnequin Master thesis: Cloning and heterologous expression of marine bacterial enzymes for the degradation of plastic (supervision: Dr. Erik Borchert)

Tora Dkawlma Master thesis: 16s rRNA gene sequence analysis of the microbial community on microplastic samples from the North Atlantic and great Pacific garbage patches