meet the team

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Meet the Team

Sammie Buzzard 

  • Please introduce yourself 

I’m Sammie Buzzard, I’m an assistant professor at Northumbria University where I’m part of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM). My background is in maths, and I became interested in the polar regions during my undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter. This led to a PhD at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology modelling Antarctica’s ice shelves, and I’ve worked in glaciology ever since, including some time spent at Georgia Tech in the US, before I joined Northumbria last year. 

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE?   

I’ll be leading up CPOM’s contribution to BIOPOLE so this will involve working across work packages and proving the contributions each work package needs (mostly Earth Observation data), as well as hopefully identifying some additional ways CPOM can contribute to BIOPOLE. 

  • What have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far? 

I’ve only just taken on this role for CPOM, but I’m excited to join the team and work across disciplines and expand my own knowledge of biogeochemistry and ecosystems, both areas I don’t get much chance to work in, but I think are incredibly important and interesting. 

  • Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share? 

The impact of the fashion industry on our planet is pretty scary so I spend a lot of my spare time making and recycling clothes to reduce waste, but I also really appreciate the scenery of the North East and do lots of trail running with my dog, the longer and hillier the better! 

Dr Sammie Buzzard from Northumbria University 

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Meet the Team 

Andrew Yool

  • Please introduce yourself.

I’m a marine biogeochemistry modeller working within the Marine Systems Modelling team at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton.  

  • Tell us about your professional and academic career before becoming part of the BIOPOLE Community. 

Way back in the last century, I originally trained as a real biologist working across the botany and zoology groups at the University of Dundee. However, I’d also always enjoyed mathematics at school, so when I came to pick a doctorate, I chose a marine ecology modelling project at the University of Warwick – well-known for its proximity to the ocean! After completing that, I was lucky enough to get a position at NOC, working with the Great God of Plankton Modelling, Mike Fasham, on large-scale carbon cycle modelling. I’ve been here ever since, gradually moving from work using simpler models (GENIE) through ocean general circulation models (OCCAM, NEMO) to Earth system models (UKESM1). 

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE?   

I’m involved in two parts of WP3 of BIOPOLE. The first is focused on adding the process of diapause to the large zooplankton of MEDUSA, the marine biogeochemistry model that I lead development of at NOC. This process essentially allows zooplankton such as copepods to hibernate in relative safety away from the risky surface ocean. Because of this, it’s implicated in the transfer of carbon to the deep ocean, and we’d like to quantify just how important it is for this. That said, although I’m leading this work, it’s my NOC colleague – Julien Palmieri – who’s actually doing the hard work of coding and testing the diapause model that I’ve designed. Separately, and based in part on my experience with the UK’s Earth system model, UKESM1, I’m assisting with a separate WP3 modelling activity to understand nutrient import/export from the polar regions and the potential effects on productivity at lower latitudes. 

  • What have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far? 

It’s a cliché, but it’s mostly been about the people so far for me. Although there’s a lot of sloshing about in UK oceanography, and I have tended to bump into many people down the years, I’m finding myself working with new colleagues in BIOPOLE. Partly it’s down to the greater biological focus of my involvement with the project, but a big dollop of luck has been important too. And I’ve really enjoyed meeting and interacting with my new colleagues. Particularly around designing the diapause model that we’re building for BIOPOLE, we’ve really benefitted from having the team around us that the project has assembled. 

  • Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share? 

Largely for historical reasons, oceanography is a subject that draws people in from across the natural sciences – and, increasingly, from the social sciences too. As a result, there are a lot of unique people in the field in the UK today. All of which makes for a really enjoyably diverse group of people with wide-ranging experiences, skills and perspectives.  

Dr Andrew Yool from National Oceanography Centre 

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Meet the Team

Adrian Martin

  • Please introduce yourself.  

I am Dr Adrian Martin and I’m based in the Marine Systems Modelling group at National Oceanography Centre (NOC). 

  • Tell us about your professional and academic career before becoming part of the BIOPOLE Community. 

Like many in oceanography I have been environmentally recycled from another field. One of the great things about marine science is that it attracts so many different backgrounds. My background is more in physics and I benefitted from the open-mindedness of marine scientists who gave me a chance to apply my numerical skills to ocean ecology problems after my PhD and I’ve been at NOC ever since – longer than I choose to remember. Despite being originally being employed as a modeller and sitting in a modelling group, oceanography encourages multidisciplinarity and I was on my first cruise within the first year at NOC and have even been chief scientist on a cruise a couple of times now. 

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE?  

Within BIOPOLE I jointly lead WP3 with Andrew Meijers. This WP is focussed on the global impacts of changes at the poles.  I am also lead for the NOC involvement in BIOPOLE. As a result my role is largely managing – I don’t get to do the really exciting stuff – but it does give me a great vantage point to see how the many components of BIOPOLE are slotting together to produce something truly impressive. 

  • What have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far? 

A highlight so far has been the Arctic work. When writing the proposal for BIOPOLE we recognised the huge amount of activity and infrastructure already present in the Arctic and approached a number of groups to suggest collaborations. They were incredibly welcoming and helpful, providing access to cruises and facilities way beyond anything we could have afforded ourselves and welcoming us to the wider Arctic scientific community. In return I hope we are adding some great complementary science to their activities. Watching this generous and inclusive example of scientific collaboration across nations develop has been wonderful. 

Dr Adrian Martin from National Oceanography Centre 

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Meet the Team 

Laura Taylor

  • Please introduce yourself.

I’m Laura Taylor, a PhD student at BAS working on Southern Ocean biogeochemistry. My work involves exploring the interactions between the carbon and silica cycles across Southern Ocean environments, particularly in relation to different sources of nutrient input to the ocean from ice. Before starting my PhD and joining BIOPOLE, I completed my undergraduate and masters degrees at UEA. 

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE?  

Within BIOPOLE, I am in work packages 1 and 2, with the majority of my PhD work being included in these areas. My main contribution to the project so far has been organising the biogeochemical cycling on the Southern Ocean BIOPOLE I cruise, where I coordinated a group of PhD students to collect samples across 12 parameters as we completed a transect from the open ocean into the sea ice. 

  • What have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far? 

So far, the cruise has been a massive highlight, but I have also really enjoyed being a part of the BIOPOLE community, especially the ECR Network which is a brilliant space for getting to know researchers in other areas. 

  • Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share? 

I’m not sure I have any particularly unique traits, but when I’m not doing science I love to go scuba diving as much as I can (although less in landlocked Cambridge), finding good local coffee, and gardening. 

Laura Taylor from British Antarctic Survey 

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Meet the Team

Gabriele Stowasser

  • Please introduce yourself.

I am a Marine Ecologist working within the Ecosystems team at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Over the last 15 years I have mainly worked on the trophic relationships in polar marine ecosystems and the marine ecosystems of the British Overseas Territories. I am interested in the spatial and temporal functioning of marine food webs and use a combination of biochemical analytical methods to identify key trophic linkages in the pelagic and benthic realms of the ocean. In recent years I have also been involved in work investigating the role of zooplankton and fish in the carbon cycling of the ocean. I divide most of my time between participating in cruises and analysing samples in the laboratory here in Cambridge.

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE and what have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far?

In BIOPOLE I am part of WP2 which focuses on biological processes that contribute to the carbon transport into the deep ocean. In November last year I had the good fortune to be part of the first BIOPOLE cruise. With a fantastic team on board, we set out to determine the dynamics, biochemical composition and structural change in the upper water column in the northern part of the Weddell Sea as the ocean moves seasonally from being fully ice covered to fully exposed. My part of the cruise was managing the deployment of our fishing nets to sample the meso-zooplankton community associated with the spring phytoplankton bloom.  

  • Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share?

When I am not at sea or in the office I like to go hiking and enjoy the music and theatre that Cambridge and London have to offer.  

Gabriele Stowasser from British Antarctic Survey

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Meet the Team

Stefanie Rynders

  • Please introduce yourself.

I’m a physical oceanographer working in the Marine Systems Modeling group at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. I develop models, mainly of the Arctic Ocean across different components of the system. Projects I have worked on so far range from fundamental physics to practical applications and climate scales. BIOPOLE has got me more involved in biogeochemistry and the connection between land and ocean.

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE?

I am part of WP1 and WP3. In work package 1 we look at nutrient inputs and I have calculated nutrient inputs from coastal erosion specifically. We made a model based erosion rate estimate, which should serve both for the historical period and future projections. I also check our existing biogeochemistry models against observational data, including from the BIOPOLE cruises. This has already highlighted some areas where improvements can be made. For work package 3 I’ll be investigating the connectivity of nutrient fluxes from the Arctic into the North Atlantic. The North Atlantic is expected to become more stratified in the future, hindering access to nutrients. So, a nutrient boost from the Arctic could be good for the ecosystem and support future fisheries.

  • What have you enjoyed about BIOPOLE so far?

The best thing about BIOPOLE is that it is such a well-integrated project across the centres. It is fun to hear about other people’s research in completely different areas every month. I have learned a lot about hydrology just by joining the meetings, though the complexity of molecular analysis in the lab still blows my mind! We are working together with observationalists and modellers across the fields on climate variability and missing processes in our NOC model.

  • Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share?

I like swimming so I try to make use of the pool nearby NOC to go swimming over lunchtime with a colleague.

Stefanie Rynders from National Oceanography Centre

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Meet the Team

Aidan Hunter

  • Please introduce yourself.

I’m an ecological modeller working with the Ecosystems team at British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. After a Masters in mathematics I applied for various environmental research roles, including modelling the fluid dynamics of wind turbine arrays, but eventually landed a marine science PhD in fishery statistics and modelling. This involved researching fishery-induced changes to the growth and maturation of commercially important species and developing a novel fish stock assessment model. My work has since focussed on fish food: plankton, particularly in the polar regions. I’ve developed a range of marine ecology models including an end-to-end ecosystem model, trait-based copepod model, and Lagrangian (particle-tracking) size-structured phytoplankton model. As part of my work with each of these, I devised numerical methods of tuning model parameters to produce statistically optimum fits to multiple data sets – making the models match observed reality. My favourite way of doing this is via Bayesian methods.

  • What do you do within BIOPOLE?

Within BIOPOLE, I’m part of WP2, working to create species distribution models to simulate how polar copepod’s horizontal and vertical distributions respond to environmental conditions. Of particular interest is a natural carbon storage process called the ‘lipid pump’, that is, the vertical transport of carbon during seasonal diapause when copepods overwinter in deep water. My models will simulate present-day vertical carbon transport associated with diapausing copepod species and, with reference to high-resolution climate forecasts courtesy of the PolarRES project, predict changes to the lipid pump under potential future climate storylines. My work so far has involved finding and collating as much polar copepod data as I can and using it to estimate parameters useful for other BIOPOLE modellers. Though a necessary first step, data wrangling isn’t what I most enjoy. I’m really looking forward to getting properly stuck in to the actual modelling, and have been contemplating adopting Bayesian methods for this work.

  • Tell us about a skill or trait unique to you that you would like to share?

I spend (too) much of my free time in summer juggling – six balls on a very good day. If you’re in Cambridge and the weather’s nice we can take some paraffin to the park and throw fire clubs, catching is optional. I also enjoy much merriment in the many fine old pubs Cambridgeshire has to offer.

Aidan Hunter from British Antarctic Survey

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Meet the Team

Petra ten Hoopen

I am a Scientific Data Manager at the UK Polar Data Centre at the British Antarctic Survey. Before joining BAS, I have spent ten years in fundamental science working in several countries on plant hormonal pathways and stress response and then moved to a data-focussed profession. For the last ten years I work with marine data, specifically genomic data at EMBL-EBI and environmental data at BAS. In my current role, I archive, publish and integrate UK-funded polar marine data, develop databases, collaborate with other data professionals on developing the data publishing infrastructure and engage with national and international communities, such as the NERC Environmental Data Service, Southern Ocean Observing System, Polar Data Forum or Research Data Alliance.

In BIOPOLE I am the data management lead ensuring that BIOPOLE data are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). I coordinate the development and implementation of a roadmap for long-term preservation of data from this large multidisciplinary project. I also take responsibility for the BIOPOLE data webpages, data management training and visualisation of BIOPOLE fieldwork for stakeholders and will support the BIOPOLE Antarctic cruise on the RRS SDA.

It is a privilege to work in the BIOPOLE multicultural community of friendly and highly skilled professionals and I enjoy getting to know people in the team.

I like plants, drawing their shapes, studying their physiology, learning about their impact on human history, taking care of them in my garden, simply having them around me, so won’t volunteer for a mission to Mars.

Petra ten Hoopen from British Antarctic Survey

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Meet the Team

Enma Elena García-Martín

I’m a biogeochemist working within the Ocean BioGeoscience group at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. During the last decade I’ve been investigating the role of phytoplankton, zooplankton and bacteria on the marine carbon cycling, the coupling between oxygen production (primary production) and consumption (plankton respiration) processes and the influence of the community structure and environmental variables, such as temperature and dissolved organic matter, on the plankton metabolism. In BIOPOLE I wear two different hats:

a) I am part of the WP2 which focusses on the biological processes that modify the carbon to nutrient ratios in polar environments. Specifically, I run laboratory experiments with different cultured phytoplankton to determine the direct and indirect effects of warming and nutrient supply on microplankton cell size, metabolism (primary production and respiration) and biomass stoichiometry. Our results will allow to understand better the responses of polar phytoplankton to changing climatic conditions.

b) I am also the Strategic Lead for Arctic Fieldwork, and when I wear this hat, I serve as a point of contact between BIOPOLE researchers and BIOPOLE project partners, facilitating the interactions between them and coordinating the activities, to ensure that BIOPOLE maximize the resources available in the Arctic.

I was lucky to live a year in Tromsø (Norway) many many years ago, where I spent hours looking at polar plankton under the microscope. BIOPOLE has given me the opportunity to spend more time with these cold, beautiful creatures without the need of woolly hat and gloves. 

I have green fingers, not only for phytoplankton, and I like growing my own veggies. Ohh, I love how tasty they are!!!


Enma Elena García-Martín from the National Oceanography Centre