People

Wiebke was born and raised in Hannover, Germany. Very early she decided that she wants to work as a marine biologist. For her undergraduate studies, Wiebke therefore moved to Bremen to study Biology with a focus on Marine Biology. She conducted the research for her Bachelor Thesis on the oxygen consumption rates in gill tissue of the Ocean quahog Arctica islandica under hypoxia at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven. While studying in France for a year duing high school, she learnt to enjoy living abroad. So after graduating from the University of Bremen, Wiebke took the chance to complete the first year of her Master Studies in Marine Biology at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao. Following her year in China, Wiebke continued her studies at the University of Bremen and started her Master Thesis on gene expression patterns in the Ocean quahog Arctica islandica under hypoxia/anoxia and reoxygenation at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology in Kiel.
During her volunteer work for coral spawning, she became aware of and interested in the different developmental strategies of corals at the GBR. In 2012 Wiebke started her PhD under the supervision of Dr David Miller focussing on transcriptomic analysis of hard and soft coral developement.