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Dr. Thomas W. Dignes, FGS, Advisor, Micropaleontology Press
Tom received an AB (Earth Sciences, with Honors) degree from Dartmouth College in 1973, a MS (Geology) from the University of Rhode Island in 1975, a PhD (Geological Oceanography) from the University of Maine in 1978, and an MBA (Business Administration) from St. Mary's College in 1987. After two years working for Exxon in Houston as an exploration geologist, he moved to Chevron USA in San Francisco, where he worked as a biostratigrapher and a development geologist. In 1993, Dr. Dignes became Manager of Stratigraphic Sciences for Chevron Overseas Petroleum, Inc. At the end of 1998, he moved on to the Mobil Exploration and Production Technology Company in Dallas, where he was named Biostratigraphy Team Lead. At the subsequent Exxon-Mobil merger, Tom became Regional Technical Team Lead for offshore Brazil. He left ExxonMobil to join the Chevron Energy Technology Company in Houston in 2004, where he became Chevron's world-wide Biostratigraphy Manager. He retired from Chevron in 2013 with his election to President of Micropaleontology Press in New York City.
Dr. Dignes has published and edited numerous articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and maintains broad research interest in the biostratigraphy of various global marine basins. He taught both geology and marine science courses (evenings and weekends) for over ten years at Berkeley City and other San Francisco Bay Area colleges in California. His current interests include the biostratigraphy, taxonomy, paleoecology, and paleoceanography of West African Mesozoic and Cenozoic foraminifers, and Paleozoic foraminifers of the Middle East and Central Asia.
Tom's principal professional activities have included serving as SEPM National Councilor for Paleontology, SEPM-NAMS Section President, Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research President, Northern California Geological Society President, and AGI Treasurer.
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Dr. Joan M. Bernhard, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Joan Bernhard is a Senior Scientist in WHOI’s Geology & Geophysics Department where she currently holds the Robert W. Morse Chair for Excellence in Oceanography. She began studying foraminifera in graduate school, where she initially studied fossils from organic-rich deposits. She included benthic foraminiferal ecology and physiology studies in her PhD research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. During postdoctoral work with Dr. Sam Bowser at the Wadsworth Center, she began investigating foraminiferal cell biology. She typically conducts laboratory experiments in an effort to determine the impacts of environmental changes on benthic foraminiferal survival, cellular responses and carbonate geochemistry. She is particularly interested in foraminifera inhabiting the oxycline, where oxygen can be absent while significant concentrations of sulfide can exist. She co-edited a book on anoxia and another describing methods to study living foraminifera. Her past studies include extant foraminifera from Antarctica, Bahamian stromatolites, cold seeps, the deep sea, silled basins and fjords. At the ISF course, she will lecture on benthic foraminiferal adaptations to chemocline living, including cell biology and ultrastructure, denitrification, and symbiosis with prokaryotes and sequestered chloroplasts.
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Prof. Rodolfo Coccioni, Urbino University (Italy)
Rodolfo Coccioni is a Professor of Paleontology and Paleoecology at the University of Urbino where he teaches the courses in these two disciplines as well as Micropalaeontology Applied to the Environment and Earth Resources. His research activity spans more than three decades and mainly focuses on middle Jurassic through to recent foraminifera, encompassing a wide variety of problems related to the biological, chemical, and climatic evolution of ancient and present oceans. He is the author and co-author of 220 papers (more than 100 as senior author) with 250 Conference presentations. He has been on the editorial staff of the Revue de Micropaléontologie since 2005. He has been a voting member of the International Subcommission on Paleogene Stratigraphy (ISPS) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and a member of the Italian Commission on Stratigraphy (CIS) since 2008. At present he works on a variety of national and international, interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with researchers from diverse Italian and foreign Universities and Research Centers. He has been the supervisor of 70 BSc and MSc theses and 6 PhD theses. At the ISF he teaches the foraminiferal response to the Mesozoic Oceanic Anoxic Events. |
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Prof Emmanuelle Geslin, University of Angers (France)
Emmanuelle Geslin is a full-time professor of Micropaleontology at the Laboratory of Actual and Fossil Bioindicators (LPG-BIAF) at the University of Angers. She obtained her PhD degree about benthic foraminifera from coastal environments in 1999. In 2000 she was rewarded with a “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” 2 years fellowship to work about benthic foraminifera’s ecology at the University of Tübingen under the direction of Professor Christoph Hemleben. She obtained a permanent position of associate-professor at the University of Angers in 2002 and created a laboratory for benthic foraminifera culturing. In collaboration with various international institutions (e.g. Aarhus University (Denmark), EPFL (Switzerland)), she used experimental approaches to study aerobic and anaerobic metabolisms of benthic foraminifera, as well as mixotrophic pathways (kleptoplastidy). She is currently involved in different projects to determine the contribution of benthic foraminifera in biogeochemical cycles particularly in coastal environments. At the ISF course, she will lecture on the biology of foraminifera focusing on metabolism of benthic foraminifer from coastal environments. |
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Dr. Sev Kender, British Geological Survey (UK) Sev Kender is currently a Teaching and Research Fellow in the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester, and an Honorary Researcher at the British Geological Survey. He did his undergraduate degree at Leicester University, and postgraduate MSc and PhD degrees at University College London. He has previously worked as a biostratigrapher for the British Geological Survey and at Chevron in Houston, and as a petroleum geologist at Halliburton. His research is focused on Cenozoic foraminiferal micropalaeontology, stable isotope geochemistry, palaeoceanography and palaeoclimatology. He supervises postgraduate research students, and has authored numerous publications. He currently serves as the Secretary of The Micropalaeontological Society. At the ISF Course he lectures on the subjects of Cenozoic benthic foraminiferal biostratigraphy, palaeontological statistical analysis, palaeoecology and shell geochemistry. |
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Prof. Mariano Parente Federico II University of Naples. Mariano Parente is associate professor of Sedimentology and Stratigraphy in the Department of Earth
Sciences, Environment and Resources at the Federico II University of Naples. He received his undergraduate
degree in Geological Sciences and his PhD in Sedimentary Geology from the University of Naples. His research
interests focus on the micropaleontology (larger foraminifera and calcareous algae), biostratigraphy and
sedimentology of Meso-Cenozoic carbonate platforms. During recent years he specialized in integrating
biostratigraphy and isotope stratigraphy to increase stratigraphic resolution and chronostratigraphic calibration
of Jurassic and Cretaceous shallow-water carbonate sequences. He is also active in researches on the response
of ancient carbonate platform ecosystems to extreme palaeoenvironmental perturbations like Oceanic Anoxic
Events and episodes of ocean acidification. He has been the main instructor of short courses on Mesozoic
Larger Foraminifers and Calcareous Algae for the oil industry. At the ISF Course he lectures on the subjects of
Taxonomy, Morphology, Biostratigraphy and Paleoecology of Mesozoic Larger Foraminifera.
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Dr. Anna Sabbatini, Marche Polytechnic University (Italy) Anna Sabbatini is currently a research postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Life and Environmental
Sciences (Di.S.V.A) at the Polytechnic University of Marche where she also achieved her PhD in
Ecology and Marine Biology.
Her main research concerns the ecology and biodiversity of modern benthic foraminifera and she
developed a particular expertise with soft-shelled species (e.g. “allogromiids”), an often neglected but
extremely important component of faunal benthic communities. The main part of her PhD work was
based on Arctic and Antarctic shallow water faunas but she also worked on samples from bathyal,
abyssal and hadal depths in the NE Atlantic, SE Pacific and Southern Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
The sensitivity of foraminifera to environmental conditions has stimulated her interest in their biology
as well as taxonomy. Since the middle of last century, foraminifera have been studied extensively by
geologists, biostratigraphers and paleontologists in order to provide proxies for use in paleoecological
and paleoceanographic reconstructions and climate change models. This has led her to explore
linkages between biological studies and the use of foraminifera in interpreting the paleoceanographic
record.
Later post-doctoral work has been wide ranging, both scientifically and geographically and it included
the following components: better comprehension of the biocoenoses including “allogromiids”,
experimental ecology of foraminifera, interpretation of paleoenvironnements and evaluation of the
geochemical proxies.
She won the prestigious Joseph A. Cushman Award for student research, the MarBEF award for
taxonomic facilities, a CNR Short Mobility Grant and the “Luigi e Francesca Brusarosco” Award,
which facilitates research in environmental sciences by Italian researchers in foreign countries. She
collaborates as invited researcher at the Natural History Museum of Paris (MNHN) where she focus her
scientific attention on the molecular mechanisms of biomineralization in foraminifera.
At the ISF Course, she lectures on the taxonomy, distribution and ecology of monothalamous
foraminifera better known as “allogromiids”. |
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Prof. Rudolf Röttger, University of Kiel (Germany) Rudolf Röttger has retired from his position as Professor of zoology at Kiel University.
After studying biology, chemistry and geography at the University of Marburg (Lahn) Rudolf qualified as a grammar school teacher. Then, at the Institute of Zoology of the University of Kiel, he started his scientific career as a marine biologist with a doctoral thesis on copepods parasitic on star fishes.
Next, at the Institute for Geology and Palaeontology he began thirty years of research on the biology of the larger benthic foraminifera, using living specimens from laboratory cultures. A Postgraduate Scholarship from the Max Kade Foundation, New York, led him to the University of Hawaii at Manoa where, by making ecological studies in the natural habitat of the foraminifera and by collecting specimens for cultures, he was able to improve his laboratory culture conditions. Rudolf Röttger's qualification for teaching Zoology (habilitation) was supported by a grant from the German Science Foundation. His teaching focused on protozoology and included courses on invertebrates. His research comprised chamber formation, reproduction processes, functional morphology and physiology (the algal symbiosis) of the nummulitid Heterostegina depressa. This work was documented by films produced by the Institute for Scientific Film, Göttingen, Germany. These films will be shown at the School on Foraminifera. Rudolf Röttger was lead editor of the book, "A Course in Protozoology", and has written “A Dictionary of Protozoology”.
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Prof. Bridget Wade, University College London (UK)
Bridget is a Professor of Micropalaeontology at The Earth Sciences, University College London (UCL), where she leads a research group of postdocs, PhD and MSc students in Cenozoic planktonic foraminifer and their applications. Her research has been international in scope, involving fieldwork in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico. She participated as a shipboard scientist on Ocean Drilling Program Leg 199 and Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 321, as well as a site survey cruise, onshore drilling by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program at Chesapeake Bay Impact Structure and the Tanzania Drilling Project. From 2005-2018 Bridget was Chair of the Paleogene Planktonic Foraminifera Working Group, part of the International sub-commission of Paleogene stratigraphy, culminating it the Atlas of Oligocene Planktonic Foraminifera published in 2018. At the ISF Course, she lectures on Neogene Planktonic Foraminifera.
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