Geologist Katharina Pahnke-May appointed

Dr. Katharina Pahnke-May has been appointed Professor of Marine Isotope Geochemistry at the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM).

From 2011 until 2019 she led the Max Planck Research Group for Marine Isotope Geochemistry, a collaboration between the ICBM and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. Pahnke-May studied geology in Göttingen and Kiel and received her doctorate from Cardiff University, Wales, in 2004. She spent her postdoctoral period in the USA, first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and then at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. Before coming to Oldenburg she was an Associate Research Professor at the University of Hawaii from 2008 to 2011. In her research Pahnke-May uses trace elements and their isotopes to determine the origin of water masses and reconstruct geochemical processes and conditions in the present and past ocean. Her research group is involved in the major international “GEOTRACES program”, that studies global biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and isotopes in the ocean.