New research leader: "Looking into other research fields is sometimes challenging, but very rewarding"

Research professor Stijn De Schepper has started as leader for the research group on climate hazards. The group focus on the causes and dynamics of extreme events and abrupt changes in the climate system. 

De Schepper is also leading the ERC Synergi Grant Into the Blue-project, which will look into how the Arctic will develop with increasing climate warming, and what an ice-free Arctic would mean for our  environment and society.

Education background?  

I did an undergraduate in Geology at the University of Ghent (Belgium), a MSc in Plant Palaeobotany at the University of Liège (Belgium). I hold a PhD from Wolfson College and the Geography Department of the University of Cambridge (UK, 2002). My PhD topic was on Plio-Pleistocene stratigraphy and paleoceanography of the North Atlantic using dinoflagellate cysts.
 

Work background?  

I did postdocs at the University of Bremen in Germany and the University of Bergen, before joining NORCE (Uni Research at the time) as a senior researcher and later on research professor. I am working with paleoclimate, paleoceanography, paleodiversity, and development of new proxies (DNA based). My work area is mostly the North Atlantic, Nordic Seas and polar oceans, and this on million-year to annual time scales. I have a strong interest in "all things" sea ice and the impacts of climate change on the marine ecosystem.

What will you bring into the new role you have at the Bjerknes Centre?  
 

Through my past and ongoing research projects, I have found that looking into other research fields is sometimes challenging but very rewarding. For me, this meant talking to specialists in microbiology, climate modelling or outreach, and this has brought some inspiring ideas. So I am enthusiastic about fostering collaborations between different disciplines, and the diverse Bjerknes community is ideal for that. Also, I have benefited from being involved in the Bjerknes Centre since I was a postdoc. Now I would like to do something back for the Bjerknes Centre and will try to support and encourage the young Bjerknes researchers.

What is important for you research-wise, going forward?  

I have a strong interest in the impacts of climate change on life in general, and on the marine ecosystem specifically. For me this means curiosity driven research into all aspects of past, present and future climate: from retrieving key paleo archives, understanding climate physics to climate impacts on life. I am particularly interested in how past warm climates looked like and developing new cross-disciplinary approaches to read the paleoclimate record.