Scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde
Biology studies in Leipzig (Bachelor) and Oldenburg (Master) as well as marine biology in Australia | PhD thesis on the effects of ocean acidification on microbial life at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Marine Microbiology in Bremen with Prof. Dr. Antje Boetius | Post-Doc at the MPI, at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) as well as at the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) of the University of Bremen and the GeoGenetics Laboratory of the University of Copenhagen | since June 2021 Senior Scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW).
There are thousands of organisms in a sediment or water sample - bacteria, algae and phytoplankton. No one can say exactly how many. DNA sequences are used here as a tool to estimate the number. We provide such DNA sequence data in the "OTC Genomics" project, and I am responsible for preparing it for scientific analysis. I have to deal with huge amounts of data. I currently supervise ten to 15 active sequencing projects and advise other working groups on statistical data analysis. In addition, my own research focuses on data mining (reuse of existing data sets in a new context). By means of bioinformatics and statistics, new cross-links can be obtained from existing data sets. For this purpose I program workflows for automatic sequence processing.
The data sets I work with are in the terabyte range. It takes the servers several weeks to evaluate them. In the meantime, I work on the other projects, write and document computer codes, and exchange ideas with many people. In fact, because of my consulting work, I am often in discussions with collaborators from partner projects and students for several hours a day. Part of being a scientist is also publishing, attending conferences, and maintaining my own network. A large part of it is also literature research, in order to stay up to date in such a fast-moving field as bioinformatics.
What I enjoy most about my work is sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm for data and helping others to use statistics to advance their research questions. I consider it a privilege to get to know so many people and different projects. This gives me the opportunity to transfer methods into a completely different thematic context and, through this breadth, to see cross-connections that are not apparent in the individual projects.
Also, data crunching is my hobby. I love thinking about how I can approach something and turn a biological question, for example, into a programmable problem and solve it computationally. I always wanted the opportunity to keep learning. Science is ideal for constantly developing professionally and character-wise. Also, the social reference was always important to me, i.e. topics such as climate change or the influence of humans on the environment. I have the freedom to do research on what interests me most. I like that.
By evaluating existing data sets from other projects or public archives from other angles, we generate new information without having to collect data ourselves. Research projects are often funded for only a few years, but can draw on long-term data through data mining. In this way, new aspects can be investigated, for example, on issues of climate and environmental protection that have only now become apparent. This re-use of data increases the value of the individual data and contributes to sustainability. Costly and resource-intensive research trips are saved if I can access global data, for example on material cycles, from my office. In this way, research results become reusable products, so to speak.
Have the courage to go your own way, even if it deviates from the set pattern. In the beginning, some things didn't work out for me the way I had imagined, but in the end, many things worked out better than I could have ever planned.
