Sorbonne University announces new winners of 'Make Our Planet Great Again' call for projects

12 new winners of the Make Our Planet Great Again call for projects were unveiled today by the French President at the One Planet Summit in Kenya. As part of a second wave of French-German selection, Rainer Kiko, a researcher at the Helmholtz Center for Oceanographic Research in Kiel, will soon be joining the Villefranche-sur-Mer Oceanography Laboratory (known as LOV, jointly run by Sorbonne University/CNRS), which is part of the Villefranche Sea Institute.

For five years, Rainer Kiko will conduct a study of the impact of low-oxygen areas on plankton in the equatorial and tropical part of the Atlantic Ocean at the Villefranche-sur-Mer Oceanography  Laboratory (LOV). The new winner has been working closely with the LOV for several years. His project includes the quantitative imaging of plankton and artificial intelligence for imaging, two themes integrated into the winning project. This is therefore a major opportunity for the LOV.

With Rainer Kiko, LOV welcomes its second recipient of a Make Our Planet Great Again Scholarship. The winner of the first wave of the call for projects in December 2017, Nuria Teixido, then visiting researcher at Stanford University, was the first to join the laboratory. She is conducting a research project on the impact of climate change on Mediterranean ecosystems by comparing aquatic environments off the Côte d'Azur and those around the island of Ischia, off Naples.

This renewed success confirms the dynamism and expertise of the Villefranche Sea Institute. More broadly, it testifies to the ability of marine stations jointly run by Sorbonne University and the CNRS to attract internationally renowned research partners in the field of climate change and oceanatmosphere-biosphere interactions.

This release was first published 14 March 2019 by Sorbonne University.