Biography

Antje Boetius is a polar and deep-sea researcher, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and Professor of Geomicrobiology at the University of Bremen. Born in 1967 in Frankfurt am Main, Antje Boetius studied biological oceanography in Hamburg and San Diego from 1986-1992 and in 1996, received her PhD on deep-sea microbiology. After stays at various marine research institutes, she established and headed a research group for the study of microbial habitats in the ocean at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology from 2003 to 2008. Since 2008, she leads the Helmholtz-Max Planck Joint Research Group for Deep-Sea Ecology and Technology. In 2009 Antje Boetius received the highly endowed Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation and was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. From 2010-2016 she was a member of the German Science Council and since 2013 the chairperson of its Scientific Commission. She is an elected member and fellow of numerous national and international academies and organizations. Antje Boetius has taken part in 50 expeditions on international research vessels. In her current research, she focuses on questions of the impact of climate change on the biogeochemistry and biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean and other deep-sea regions. She has been awarded the ERC Advanced Grant of the European Research Council, as well as a number of other prestigious awards. In 2011 she published a comprehensive popular science book on the deep sea "The Dark Paradise" together with her father, the writer Henning Boetius. In 2018 she received the Communicator Award of the Stifterverband and the DFG. She is also the recipient of the German Environmental Prize (2018) and the Federal Cross of Merit (2019) amongst numerous other awards.