Congratulations!Isabell Hochfeld successfully defended her doctoral thesis

24 July 2024

Photo: Ferdous Sultana

We are proud to announce the successful disputation of our SICSS member Isabell Hochfeld.

Her dissertation “The neglected role of phytoplankton adaptation in marine ecosystem models − Implications for climate projections and future perspectives” was supervised by Dr. Jana Hinners (Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon) and Prof. Dr. Inga Hense (Universität Hamburg).

During her PhD, Isabell worked on improving the predictive skills of marine ecosystem models. For this purpose, she developed an innovative ecosystem model that considers a hitherto largely ignored process − the evolutionary adaptation of phytoplankton. By applying her model to the Baltic Sea, Isabell studied the effect of phytoplankton adaptation on simulated phytoplankton and ecosystem responses to global warming. In addition to the lack of adaptation, ecosystem models are usually used predictively without further validation that they are equally applicable to past, present, and, by implication, future scenarios. Isabell contributed to the developement of a validation approach for ecosystem models based on environmental and biological data from sediment archives.

She was a member of the Institute of Marine Ecosystem and Fishery Science (IMF) at Universität Hamburg.

Isabell's future plans?
She would like to continue her career in environmental modeling, software development, or data analysis.

More on Isabell's work:

• Hochfeld, I. and Hinners, J.: Evolutionary adaptation to steady or changing environments affects competitive outcomes in marine phytoplankton, Limnology and Oceanography, 69, 1172–1186, https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.12559, 2024
• Her research is part of the PhythoArk project: https://phytoark.com/