New Professorships

Nov 18, 2019

Frank Oliver Glöckner and Thomas Laepple are new AWI cooperation professors at the University of Bremen. Photos: Werk 1/ AWI — Frank Oliver Glöckner (left) and Thomas Laepple are new AWI cooperation professors at the University of Bremen. Photos: Werk 1/ AWI

With Prof. Frank Oliver Glöckner and Dr. Thomas Laepple, two new AWI Cooperation professors were appointed in November.

Prof. Dr. Frank Oliver Glöckner was appointed as professor for "Earth-System Data Sciences" at the Faculty of Geosciences of the University of Bremen. The appointment was made jointly with the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Glöckner is an internationally renowned researcher and expert for environmental and genomic data, who has made central contributions to scientific data infrastructures in Earth system research for many years.

After his studies and doctorate in microbial ecology at the Technical University of Munich, Frank Oliver Glöckner moved to the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. Here he led a project group on microbial genomics and became head of the research group "Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics". Since 2010, he has held a professorship for bioinformatics at Jacobs University Bremen.

Dr. Thomas Laepple was appointed Professor in the field of "Earth System Diagnostics" at the Faculty of Geosciences of the University of Bremen. He was also appointed jointly with the AWI. Laepple is an internationally recognized climate researcher who innovatively combines Earth system modelling, palaeoclimate research and statistical data analysis to use data from the geological past for a better understanding of the climate processes of the present and the future.

After graduating from the University of Hamburg with a diploma in physics, Laepple received his doctorate in physics from the University of Bremen. He did research at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven and at Harvard University (USA) and has been head of a Helmholtz Young Investigator Group at the AWI in Potsdam since 2013. In 2017 he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant.

Both Glöckner and Laepple wil cooperate closely with MARUM.