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Speakers & experts short biographies
The Ocean of Tomorrow projects: what results so far?
Brussels, 26 March 2014
is Head of Science at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, an independent marine
research organisation with charitable status. She leads the Sea and Society area of science
and its broad spectrum of interdisciplinary research projects from the socio-economics of
marine ecosystems and their services through to environment and human health, marine
biodiscovery and renewable energy. In September 2013 she completed a 3 year part-time
post as Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK’s marine regulator, the Marine Management
Organisation. She is a marine ecologist, originally with a deep interest in benthic ecology but
now her focus is on interdisciplinary, societally relevant marine research. Over the last 14
years she has developed and led novel, collaborative research in large EU and UK funded projects that integrates
marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, ecosystem modelling, marine ecosystem services, environmental
economics, social science and governance to support management for sustainable ecosystems. Currently she
coordinates the EU FP7 Ocean of Tomorrow project VECTORS, participates as a work package leader in EU FP7 Ocean
of Tomorrow project DEVOTES, and leads the UK Energy Research Centre’s Energy and Environment Theme funded
by the UK Research Council.
Melanie Austen
was appointed Director of the Bioeconomy Directorate in DG RTD on 16 January
2014. Before this he was the Chef de Cabinet of the European Commissioner for Research,
Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. He has been a European Commission
official since 1993. During his career to date he has worked on humanitarian aid assistance
programmes in the former Yugoslavia and in Albania, as well as public administration reform
in Central and Eastern Europe. He was the Poland country desk officer responsible for the
European Commission's Opinion on their application for EU membership. At senior level he
was a member of the cabinet of Commissioner David Byrne with responsibility for enlargement, public health and
global health security issues. As Head of Strategy for the Commission's food, health and consumers directorate
general SANCO, he was responsible for rolling out Regulatory Impact Assessments, modernising stakeholder
relations and foresight activities. He was the Chef de Cabinet for the first Bulgarian European Commissioner Meglena
Kuneva on Consumer Affairs, where he led an economic empowerment approach to consumer policy and consumer
markets including global safety issues.
John Bell
Cornell has worked at the Stockholm Resilience Centre since 2011, where she
coordinates the international Planetary Boundaries Research Network. She is a lead author
of the Arctic Council funded Arctic Resilience Report, and part of the joint SRC/Stockholm
Environment Institute ARR secretariat. She is currently a Vice President and Trustee of the
Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, an international professional
institute that uniquely takes a multidisciplinary, sectoral perspective. Dr Cornell has a
background in marine and atmospheric chemistry, earning her PhD in 1996 from the
University of East Anglia. She moved into interdisciplinary global change research in 2000,
first at the UK's Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment and the Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change. She has served as an advisor on sustainability matters to national and local government,
universities, businesses, and civil society organisations.
Sarah
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spent most of his carrier as marine biologist in charge of fisheries and
aquaculture research in France then in the European Commission. He acted first as scientific
officer in DG MARE (former DG Fish) where he was in charge of following FP projects funded
in the field of the interactions between fisheries, aquaculture and the environment. He
moved to DG RTD in 2009 where he was nominated Head of sector fisheries and
aquaculture in Directorate E Biotechnologies, Agriculture and Food. He was in particular
coordinating the FP7 “The Ocean of Tomorrow” calls. He has recently been appointed as
Deputy Head of the new Marine Resources Unit in Directorate RTD/F – Bioeconomy.
Jacques
Fuchs
is a senior scientist at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique) and coordinator of the Damocles Integrated Project (2005-2010) and Search for
Damocles SSA (2006-2010). He also participates in the European projects ATP and ACoBAR.
Jean-Claude Gascard started working in polar oceanography in 1976 in the Labrador Sea in
cooperation with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Dartmouth, Canada) and
contributed to the Marginal Ice Zone international Experiment (MIZEX) in 1983-1984. He has
contributed to several major polar programs funded by the European Union such as the
European Subpolar Ocean Program (ESOP 1 and ESOP 2) from 1993 until 1998, MAIA
(Monitoring the Atlantic Inflow towards the Arctic) from 2000 until 2002 and ASOF (Arctic- Subarctic Ocean Fluxes)
which started in 2003 and ended in 2005. He is past chairman of the Arctic Ocean Sciences Board (AOSB) and was
member of the IASC steering committee in charge of the preparation of the International Conference for Arctic
Research Program ICARP II in 2005. He was convenor of a polar session dedicated to Pan-Arctic long term variability
at the European Geophysical Union (EGU) General Assembly in 2003, 2004 and 2005. His main interest concerns the
interactions between subtropical and polar water masses leading to the formation of deep and abyssal waters (deep
convection), thermohaline circulation, air-sea-ice interactions and the implication of the Arctic Ocean in Climate
variabilityand Global Changes.
Jean-Claude
Gascard
is a marine global biogeochemical modeller. In his PhD and habilitation
thesis (Max Planck Institute of Meteorology and University of Hamburg) he focused on the
role of the marine carbon and silicon cycles within the climate system. He is professor in
chemical oceanography at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen in Norway.
He leads the Research Group on Carbon and Biogeochemical Cycles of the Bjerknes Centre
for Climate Research. He is head of the Norwegian nationally coordinated project EVA on
Earth system modelling of climate variations in the Anthropocene. He currently leads the EU
FP7 large-scale integrating project CARBOCHANGE, both aiming at a best possible
quantification of anthropogenic carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans. He has worked as a scientist in Germany,
Denmark, and Norway, and has been visiting scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO, USA) as well
as the Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'environnement (LSCE, France). He is steering committee member of
the IGBP core project SOLAS (Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study).
Christoph Heinze
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is Research Director and Head of the Functional and Evolutionary Ecology
Department at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy (http://www.szn.it) . Her
research interests include exploring the biotechnological applications of microalgal
secondary metabolites as pharmaceuticals. Editorial Board Member of several journals
including PloSONE and Frontiers in Marine Biotechnology, she is also the author of 92 Web
of Science publications and co-author of Marine Board-ESF Position Paper 15: Marine
Biotechnology: A New Vision and Strategy for Europe (2010). She participates in the
following current projects: PHARMASEA FP7 project KBBE.2012.3.2-01: Innovative marine
biodiscovery pipelines for novel industrial products (http://www.pharma-sea.eu); 3 Italian National Industry-Driven
Projects (PON01) coordinated by Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics srl, Sanofi S.p.A and BIOGEM Scarl.
Adrianna Ianora
is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. He consults
for a number of UK marine biotechnology companies and sits on the Industrial
Biotechnology Sector group of the Biosciences Knowledge Transfer Network, and has led
scientific missions to Japan/US/New Zealand. He was part of the ESF Working Group that
prepared the position paper “Marine Biotechnology: A New Vision and Strategy for Europe”
(2010). Marcel Jaspars founded the interdisciplinary Marine Biodiscovery Centre, a £1.6 M
investment to focus on marine resources for novel pharmaceuticals, and to investigate
fundamental questions in chemical ecology and biosynthesis. The Centre contains facilities
for chemistry, chromatography, spectroscopy, molecular genetics and microbiology. Marcel leads the PharmaSea EU
FP7 consortium (EUR 9.5 M, 24 partners from 14 countries) which aims to make the use of marine microbial derived
compounds a more attractive proposition to the pharmaceutical industry. The microbes are obtained from extreme
environments, in particular hadal trenches, cryogenic environments and thermal vents.
Marcel Jaspars
obtained his first degree in Biology from the University of Athens
followed by a Ph.D. degree on Marine Biology from University of Swansea (UK). He is
currently Research Director of the Institute of Oceanography in the Hellenic Centre for
Marine Research (HCMR), in Greece, being also the Director (2003-2006) and Acting
Director (2009-2012) of the Institute in HCMR. He has worked for more than 30 years in the
fields of ecotoxicology, marine biology and ecology and has long experience in international
marine policy and management. His current work focuses on marine research as well as on
policy-relevant marine research in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Recently, he was
involved in expeditions and research work in the Red Sea. He was the Greek representative member of Environment
Committees of DG research for the 5th FP and 6th FP. He is currently the Greek representative of the “Climate
Action, Resource Efficiency and Raw materials” Committee of the Horizon2020. He was the Coordinator of the SSA
European program IASON, and SESAME-IP (2006-2011). He is currently leading the European project PERSEUS (20122015), with 53 partners from 21 countries, aiming at helping the implementation of Marine Strategy Framework
Directive (MSFD) in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas
Vangelis Papathanassiou
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was born in Bremen, Germany. In 2001 she achieved her Diploma in
Geology/Paleontology with main focus on Geochemistry and Hydrology at the University of
Bremen, Germany. Subsequently, she was appointed as a graduate researcher (PhDstudent) at the Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences. She successfully defended her
PhD thesis entitled ‘Diagenetic and Paleoceanographic variations in sedimentary Mn, Ba,
and CaCO3, with emphasis on the eastern Mediterranean sapropel S1’ in 2005. From 2005
to 2011 she worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the geochemical related research unit
Marine Geosystems at the Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany on the
source and genesis of deep sources fluids. Since 2011 she is appointed as scientific manager of a large-scale
collaborative EU FP7 ‘The Ocean of Tomorrow’ project (ECO2) at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel,
Germany.
Anja
Reitz
became in 2010 the first Professor of Marine Governance and Environmental
Science. Based at Newcastle University in England, she leads international teams in building
robust science to improve impacts of marine management on the livelihoods of people
dependent on the sea. Selina leads the interdisciplinary research on governance and socioeconomics in the FP7 FORCE project (http://www.force-project.eu ). She is a member of the
Advisory Board for the VECTORS project. Professor Stead has senior appointments as the
Chair (2014-2016) of the Scottish Government’s Marine Science Advisory Board (2010-2016)
and is an invited member of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture (Cefas) Science Advisory
Committee (2013-2017). Selina Stead was President of the European Aquaculture Society between 2008 and 2010.
Prof. Stead also serves on: North Eastern Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority and the ICES socio-economics
aquaculture working group. Current research projects include governance of coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean,
small-scale fisheries in the UK, Oman and the Philippines, sea cucumber biology in South Africa, Marine Protected
Areas in Thailand, piracy in Kuwait and Somalia etc.
Selina Stead
Luis Valdés Santurio is, since January 2009, the Head of Ocean Sciences at the
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Between 2000 and 2009 he was
Director of the Centro Oceanográfico de Gijón - Instituto Español de Oceanografía (CO
Gijón-IEO). With more than 30 years of experience in marine research and field studies
related to marine ecology and climate change, he has in 1990 established the time series
programme based on ocean sampling sites and marine observatories which is maintained
by Spain in the North Atlantic (www.seriestemporales-ieo.com). He has also advised various
governmental, intergovernmental and international organizations as well as research
funding agencies. He has a vast experience in ICES where he has chaired different Working Groups and Committees
including the Oceanographic Committee. He also served as Spanish Delegate in ICES and in the IOC-UNESCO.
Jorge
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graduated 1981 as naval architect summa cum laude in Berlin Technical
University and served later in various executive industrial functions, e.g. 1989-93 as
Managing Director of Schwarting Biogas (D), 1993-2001 as Sales Director of Abeking &
Rasmussen Ship+Yachtbuilders (D), 2002-3 as Managing Director of Kvaerner Warnow Werft
in Rostock (D), 2003-2008 as Senior Vice President of Aker Yards’ Group Management in Oslo
(NOR), at this time the largest European Shipbuilding Group, and 2008-9 as CTO and
Member of the Board of Wadan Yards, Oslo (NOR), a Russian-Korean joint venture and Aker
spin-off. Since January 2010 Michael vom Baur works exclusively for his own consultancy
business MvB euroconsult. In this framework he started service as interim manager in Hoppe Marine GmbH,
Hamburg (D), a consultancy client, in August 2013. During 2003-2007 Michael vom Baur was elected Chairman of
COREDES, the permanent R+D-Working Group of the former European Shipbuilders Association CESA. In this
function he was one of the builders of the WATERBORNE European Technology Platform.
Michael vom Baur
holds a PhD in Marine Microbiology from the University of Kiel, having
focussed on degradation of man-made chemicals in the marine environment. Since 1993
she has worked primarily in the marine and maritime private sectors as consultant for
environmental, quality and safety issues, and then as project manager and EU liaison for the
Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. Besides dealing with
environmental aspects of ports and shipping she has enhanced the use of scientific results
by international stakeholders from environmental agencies, industry and NGOs. In 2005 she
started the Environmental & Marine Project Management Agency, EMPA Bremen. As
managing director she and EMPA’s staff support diverse research projects with an increasing focus on marine
biotechnology and genomics. Dissemination tasks are performed in targeted stakeholder-specific ways, e.g. through
organising think-tank sessions trainings and workshops, as well as through audiovisual material. Johanna Wesnigk
manages the FP7-project Micro B3 where she is in charge of training and dissemination. Micro B3 focuses on the
potential of marine micro-organisms to understand ecological cycles and provide knowledge for biotechnological
applications. The project integrates legal and ethical, multidisciplinary and cross-cutting elements.
Johanna Wesnigk
is senior scientist at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn of Naples (Italy),
where she is employed since 1989. She is the Scientific Coordinator of the Long Term
Ecological Research program at the plankton research site MareChiara (LTER-MC) in the
Gulf of Naples (http://szn.macisteweb.com/), which takes part to LTER-Europe, LTERInternational and the Genomic Observatories (GOs) networks. She has been the Chair of the
IOC-UNESCO Intergovernmental Panel on Harmful Algal Blooms from 1995 to 2002. Her
main interest is the diversity and ecology of marine microalgae and the endogenous and
exogenous factors driving their dynamics at different time and space scales. Her research
focuses on phytoplankton variations under changing environmental conditions and includes
detailed studies on selected species or species-groups, e.g., the most relevant primary producers and potentially
harmful species. Taxonomic research on these organisms is complemented by physiological and molecular studies,
including the recent Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) approaches, aimed at improving the resolution of ecological
studies and the knowledge of the functional role of microalgal diversity. Her research has led to the description of ca
20 new microalgal species and to the publication of about 70 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.
Adriana Zingone
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