23.03.2018 Kiel/Germany. In memory of four young marine scientists from Kiel, who lost their lives during a bomb attack in Dschibuti in 1987, the Annette-Barthelt Stiftung gives yearly prizes for excellent graduation work (PhD and Master theses) in marine sciences since 1990. This year, Tobias Vonnahme was among the awardees (among Greta Reintjes and Florian Schütte) who got awarded during the Annette Barthelt prize ceremony at the GEOMAR in Kiel at the 23rd of March.
The prize is given in memory of Annette BArthelt, Daniel Reinschmidt, Marc Muchalla and Hans-Wilhelm Halbeisen who travelled for a marine expedition to Dschibuti in March 1987. From there they wanted to start an expedition to the Indian Ocean, but fell victim to a terror attack in a restaurant. Four additional colleagues were seriously injured. Subsequently, the Annette Barthelt Stiftung Award was founded to perpetuate the memory on the victims, while serving as a vehicle to acknowledge excellent Master and PhD theses since 1990.
Tobias Vonnahme wrote his Master thesis “Microbial diversity and function of deep sea manganese nodule ecosystems” at the Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen (Germany), under Prof Dr. Antje Boetius and Dr. Massimiliano Molari. He took sediment samples from the Peru basin in an area, which was disturbed 26 years prior to his expedition. He compared the microbial communities, abundances, and activities besides on a variety of biogechemical parameters to reference stations in the surrounding area and found that the microbial activities and abundances are still significantly reduced. Now, Tobias Vonnahme is doing his PhD in the Arctic SIZE group.
In addition to Tobias, Dr. Greta Reintjes was awarded the prize for her PhD thesis on polysaccharide degrading bacteria and Dr Florian Schütte for his PhD thesis exploring mesoscale eddies.
More information can be found in the press release of Geomar (https://www.geomar.de/news/article/auszeichnungen-fuer-arbeiten-in-der-mikrobiologie-und-ozeanographie/) and the homepage of the Annette Barthelt Stiftung (http://www.annette-barthelt-stiftung.de/)
picture: MPI Bremen