12 June 2020 news

We welcome Benjamin Merkel who has started in a Post Doc position at Akvaplan-niva. Benjamin was born in Germany, where he also completed his undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Bremen. He moved to Tromsø in 2010 for his masters and later PhD studies in marine ecology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the Norwegian Polar Institute. His research interests include the polar oceans, movement ecology, spatial analyses, population biology, species distributions, visualization of complex data and computational modelling. Through his studies he gained a broad experience in the use of R statistical computing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as well as extensive experience in the analysis of animal tag data and remote sensing data. Outside the office he spent all summers and some springs of the last decade in various remote high and low Arctic field locations working as field member or leader with several marine mammal and seabird species.

"I am a very open and outgoing person and learning is an important part of my life. I am therefore happy to engage in new challenges as they often arise during data analysis or in the field. I appreciated sharing experiences and helping others and always has an open door for anyone with a R or statistical problem" says Benjamin.