Helle Ploug | |
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Alma mater | Aarhus University |
Scientific career | |
Thesis | Light and photosynthesis in dense populations of microalgae (1996) |
Helle Ploug is marine scientist known for her work on particles in seawater. She is a professor at the University of Gothenburg, and was named a fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography in 2017.
Ploug grew up in Denmark. [1] She has an M.Sc. (1992) [2] and a Ph.D. (1996) from Aarhus University. Following her Ph.D. she did postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and the University of Copenhagen. Starting in 2006 she was a scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, [3] and in 2008 she moved to Stockholm University where she had a Marie Curie fellowship. [1] In 2006 she became an associate professor at the University of Gothenburg where she was promoted to professor in 2013. [3]
Ploug's early research used fiber optic sensors to measure light in marine sediments. [4] [5] She went on to examine how particles assemble in marine systems. [6] [7] Her work on particles includes developing methods to quantify bacterial use of particles, [8] [9] and the implications for consumption of particles produced by copepods. [7] [10] Ploug has developed methods to measure how fast particles sink through the ocean [11] and the rate sinking particles are converted into carbon dioxide. [12] Her recent research has focused on measurements of biogeochemical cycling at the single cell level using Nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry. [13] [14]
In 2017 Ploug was named a fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. [15]