Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg
Germany
fellow
Irina Köster
2026-2027
Home institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Chemistry; Earth, environmental and climate sciences
Theme(s)
Other
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Irina Koester is a marine biogeochemist whose research focuses on organic matter cycling in the ocean and the microbial processes that shape it. She earned her PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she developed untargeted metabolomics approaches, combining mass spectrometry and cheminformatics, to investigate organic matter dynamics across marine environments affected by global change, including harmful algal blooms, oxygen-deficient zones, and coral reef ecosystems. She is currently a Postdoctoral Investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where her work focuses on targeted approaches for quantifying metabolites in marine systems. Her research links molecular-level measurements of organic matter to broader questions in ocean biogeochemistry, microbial activity, and environmental change.
Research Project
Towards a Junior Research Group: Marine Metabolomics in a Changing Ocean
Organic matter sustains microbial life in the ocean and plays a central role in the cycling of carbon and nutrients. However, the molecular-level processes that control the production, transformation, and persistence of organic compounds remain poorly constrained, especially under changing environmental conditions.
This project investigates how oxygen availability, temperature, and nutrient supply influence microbial transformations of organic molecules in marine systems. By combining targeted and untargeted metabolomics with microbial ecology and multi-omics approaches, the research links specific metabolites to microbial taxa, functions, and environmental conditions. The project will provide molecular insight into how microbial processes regulate organic matter cycling and shape carbon and nutrient fluxes in a changing ocean.
Research Interests:
Chemical oceanography; marine biogeochemistry; metabolomics; mass spectrometry; organic matter cycling; microbial processes; global change