Birgit Heim -- Geologist

As Natural Scientist [Geologist] with highly qualified technical skills in the remote sensing sector as well as with broad laboratory and field experiences, I am interested to further deepen these interdisciplinary skills within remote sensing research projects.

My working experiences at environmental agencies in the sector of water quality started during my studies of Geology and includes years of experience in laboratory and field analyses. I assisted in a remote sensing NERC project in Scotland and systematically developed technical and software skills specifically in handling hyperspectral airborne data at the German Research Centre for Aerospace (DLR).

This combination of holding an extensive technical background together with a deep understanding in natural processes helped me to succeed as a graduate research assistant at the GeoForschungsinstitut Potsdam (Germany). The projects involved working in an international team conducting ground truth for remote sensing projects at Lake Baikal (Siberia). After receiving my PhD in 2006 (University of Potsdam, Dep. of Geosciences) with my thesis of 'Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses of Lake Baikal's Surface-waters Using Ocean Colour Satellite Data', I am currently on a lecturer postion for Remote Sensing and GIS aplications at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Central Germany.

For the next years, I succeeded in getting a grant as a postdoctoral fellow within a self-designed Arctic project, starting in March 2008 at the Alfred-Wegener Institute, Research Unit Potsdam, Germany. The Circum-Arctic project is an remote sensing application study of the specific bio-optical setting of Arctic coastal waters (IPY EoI #1176 'OCoc- from Ocean Colour to Organic Carbon'). The OCoc-Proposal is joined with the IPY Project #90 'Arcit Circumpolar Coastal Observatory Network' and will contribute to the data base of the Arctic Coastal Dynamics ACD Project (http://www.awi-potsdam.de/acd/).

My research will address the challenges of high-latitudinal optical remote sensing where applications and evaluated enduser-specific products for arctic waters are still in developement.

BIRGIT HEIM Geologist