PhD defence by Amalia Papapostolou

Amalia Papapostolou, DTU Aqua, will defend her PhD thesis "Trophic transfer efficiency in the pelagic food chain: A carbon odyssey" on Monday, 3 February 2025 at 1 p.m.

You can attend the defence online on Zoom via this link or in person at DTU, Henrik Dams Allé, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, building 202, meeting room 8003.

In her PhD thesis Amalia Papapostolou describes how energy moves through the ocean food webs. At the bottom of these food webs are the photosyntetic plankton which convert carbon dioxide into organic material and thereby fuels the entire marine ecosystem. Amalia Papapostolou introduces the NUM-library computational tool that can simulate plankton dynamics and describe how plankton size and nutrition affect energy transfer upwards in the food web. In her research she has developed an algorithm that shows how plankton optimize resource use in changing environments and added diatoms to the NUM library. Furthermore, she has created a new method to measure energy transfer from plankton to fish and used it to map energy transfer efficiency in the oceans.

A copy of the thesis is available for reading at DTU Aqua. Please contact PhD Coordinator Susan Zumbach Johannesen, szjo@aqua.dtu.dk

Examiners

• Professor Marja Koski, DTU Aqua (chair)
• Reader Neil S. Banas, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
• Professor Marie Maar, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark

Chair at defence

• Senior Researcher Vanessa Trijoulet, DTU Aqua

Supervisors

• Principal supervisor: Professor Ken Haste Andersen, DTU Aqua
• Co-supervisor: Professor Andre Visser, DTU Aqua
• Co-supervisor: Postdoc Camila Serra Pompei, DTU Aqua

Learn more

• Popular science summary of Amalia Papapostolou's PhD thesis