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From 1 May 2025, Prof Dr Maarten Boersma will step up as Acting Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute. As a biologist, he has been conducting research, predominantly at the Helgoland and Sylt stations, since 2001, since 2015 as section head. He has been on the AWI Board of Directors since summer 2024. Maarten Boersma succeeds Prof Dr Antje Boetius, who takes up the position of President of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California.
As head of the section Coastal Ecology at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Maarten Boersma's focus is on the effects of climate change and other stressors on plankton communities in the North Sea. In the current research programme, he is the AWI speaker of the topic: Coastal Zones at a Time of Global Change, and is therefore just as prominent within the AWI as he is in the German and international scientific community. In addition to the North Sea, Maarten Boersma also studies other coastal systems, for example in the Canadian Arctic, in cooperation with AWI colleagues from Potsdam and Bremerhaven.
“When asked, I was thrilled to be entrusted with leading the AWI as Acting Director,” said Maarten Boersma. “Before accepting the offer, I conferred with the members of the Board of Directors and the staff in my section. I am delighted that the deputy section head Dr. Sabine Horn supports me, as do our administrative director Dr Karsten Wurr and both vice directors, Prof Dr Thomas Jung and Dr Uwe Nixdorf. I am therefore very happy to take on the range of responsibilities that this role entails at the AWI, the Helmholtz Association and the various networks in which we are involved.”
“I am very much looking forward to this new working relationship with Maarten Boersma in central management. I value the purposeful, hands-on and positive way in which he carries out his duties,” emphasised AWI Administrative Director Dr Karsten Wurr. The institute is on the right track: in an international review at the end of March 2025, the Centre’s research programme as part of the Helmholtz Association's fourth round of programme-oriented funding (PoF IV), was very positively assessed. “From summer 2025, work will begin on drafting our research programme for the next funding period. I am certain that our dedicated team at the AWI will put together an ambitious and exciting programme,” enthused Maarten Boersma, outlining an important task that lies ahead. “I hope that the AWI can further expand its outstanding expertise as an internationally leading institute for polar and marine research. I would like to thank Antje Boetius wholeheartedly for her tireless work over the last seven years – the outstanding assessment results leave no doubt as to how successfully she has driven the AWI forward. We wish her success at MBARI and many exciting discoveries.”
Maarten Boersma will take over as Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute on 1 May 2025 on an interim basis, until a selection committee chooses a long-term appointee for the position. He succeeds Antje Boetius who, also on 1 May, will join the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California as President.
BIO
Maarten Boersma is an aquatic ecologist, who has worked both in freshwater and in marine environments. Having received his Ph.D. in 1994 (University of Amsterdam) on the population dynamics of the freshwater cladoceran Daphnia in a shallow eutrophic lake in the Netherlands, he moved to the Max-Planck-Insitut für Limnologie in Plön, Germany. Here he investigated the impacts of different aspects of nutrition on zooplankton dynamics. He started teaching at the Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, and was awarded his venia legendi in 2001. He was appointed Apl. Prof. at the same University in 2006. He then moved to the Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, and continued his research on the impacts of multiple stressors on the planktonic community in the southern North Sea. Boersma was appointed as Professor in Experimental Coastal Ecology at the University of Bremen in 2012. He was a member of the steering committee in the BIOACID projects on the impact of ocean acidification on marine communities, and is now heavily involved in research on the ecological impacts of alkalinity enhancement in coastal seas.
http://www.awi.de/en/about-us/service/press.html
Karsten Wurr and Maarten Boersma
Kerstin Rolfes
Alfred Wegener Institute
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