On June 22nd the NFB (Lower Austrian Research and Education) presented the projects of the Science and Life Science Calls 2015 selected by a jury in the Vierzigerhof in Langenlois. The WasserCluster Project ORCA (Organic carbon; www.organic-carbon.at) was presented with a short movie and a presentation.
In June 128 young scientists were awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and the Max Kade-Foundation for their highly qualified projects – among them WasserCluster researcher Dunja Lukic. She received a DOC fellowship to carry out her PhD research under the supervision of Zsófia Horváth and Robert Ptacnik. Congratulations!
The master thesis of Marina Jecmenica investigates the potential of poultry by-product meal as potential fish meal replacement in diets of a hybrid charr (S. alpinus X fontinalis), frequently raised in freshwater aquaculture in and around the European Alps. Marina Jecmenica successfully finished her master thesis under supervision of Martin Kainz in April.
Lakes, rivers, estuaries and oceans are closely connected. Despite this, aquatic research is still divided in marine and freshwater sciences. Now scientists from 21 leading research institutes and universities and two enterprises from 12 countries across Europe - among them WasserCluster Lunz - aim to change this and have joined forces in the project “AQUACOSM - Network of Leading European AQUAtic MesoCOSM Facilities Connecting Mountains to Oceans from the Arctic to the Mediterranean”.
WasserCluster researcher Csaba Vad investigated the diversity of animals in bomb craters from World War 2. He found out, that they are a home to rare and vulnerable animals. This results were in the headlines from newscientist.com to natureworldnews.com.
Our intern Isabell Aigner got an award for her internship report from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and the ministry BMVIT. Together with her internship tutor, our technical assistant Beate Pitzl, he was invited at the award ceremony in the Urania Vienna.
Periphytic algae are in the focus of Elisabeth Bondar-Kunzes PhD-thesis. Periphytic algae can be expected to reflect short-term impacts and sudden changes and disturbances in the environment additionally to long-term changes. Periphyton can play an important role for biogeochemical processes in riverine ecosystems and has a rapid reproduction rate and very short life cycles. Elisabeth Bondar-Kunze successfully finished her thesis with the title “The effect of different hydrological alterations on periphyton development in riverine ecosystems” supervised by Thomas Hein in April.
In March the new FWF project FLASHMOB “Fluxes Affected by Stream Hydrophytes: Modelling Of Biogeochemistry” started. It is a project of working group BioFrames in cooperation with the University of Antwerp and it will last until 2020.