Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg
Germany
fellow
Bryce Inman
2026-2027
Home institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Biology; Earth, environmental and climate sciences
Theme(s)
Other
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Bryce Inman is a Staff Scientist at Stanford University working with Manu Prakash, and a Guest Investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). His expertise is in microscale physics, biological-physical interactions, and microbial mucoscapes. His research has focused on physical structuring of the chemical microenvironment of plankton in the oceans. Through experiments, simulations, and theory, he seeks to understand how these individual interactions collectively emerge as global biogeochemical dynamics. Through a Simons Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) working with Farooq Azam, he developed novel methodology to visualize viscous mucus material and characterize the physical niche space shaping bacteria-organic matter interactions. His research also includes nutrient fluxes through the viscous phycosphere, the fluid mechanics of sinking and swimming plankton, and plankton in ocean turbulence.
Research Project
Viscous Control of Bacterial Degradation and Sinking of Marine Snow
Throughout the world’s oceans, mucus from algae and dead cells clumps together and sinks to the deep in a flurry of “marine snow”. These sinking balls of mucus can store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the abyssal ocean for millennia, if they can reach the bottom. Their ultimate fate depends on how fast they sink versus how quickly bacteria digest them, but we have never determined how those two processes influence each other. Using a microscopy technology that I developed recently, we can now visualize the 3D nanoscale viscosity inside of marine snow (how “honey-like” they are) and use it to connect bacterial breakdown of a mucus aggregate to its density and sinking speed. To succeed, this interdisciplinary project requires experts in microscopy (Rudolf Amann, MPI Bremen), biopolymer chemistry (Jan-Hendrik Hehemann, MARUM), marine snow physics (Morten Iversen, AWI), and enzyme proteomics (A. Murat Eren, ICBM), who are fortunately all located close to Delmenhorst. A HWK fellowship will bring my expertise in microscale biophysics and the viscosity microscopy method to Northern Germany to uncover a key process in the ocean carbon sink.
Research Interests:
Marine snow; biological oceanography; phytoplankton; bacteria; rheology; fluid mechanics