Prof Dr Helmut Hillebrand, Professor of Planktology at the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) at the University of Oldenburg, has been elected Chair of the Northwest Marine Research Association (NWVM) at its general meeting.
Founded in 2007, the association coordinates research projects of marine research institutions in Lower Saxony and Bremen and aims to initiate transfer projects with industry in particular. Its members include the Universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the German Maritime Museum, the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. The Northwest Network for Marine Research sees itself as a point of contact for marine sciences at state level under the umbrella of the German Marine Research Consortium (KDM).
Hillebrand studied biology in Oldenburg and completed his doctorate at the University of Kiel in 1999. This was followed by a four-year research stay at the Erken Laboratory of the Institute of Limnology at Uppsala University (Sweden). From 2002 to 2004, Hillebrand was a junior professor at the Institute of Oceanography at Kiel University. He then worked as a university lecturer in Cologne until he accepted an appointment at the University of Oldenburg in 2008.
