Who is involved?

Research institutes

The HEALSEA project will be carried out at CNRS in Montpellier and Sète as part of two joint research units (UMR in French):

• UMR MARBEC – MARine Biodiversity, Exploitation and Conservation.
• UMR ISEM – Institute of Science of Evolution.

There will also be a secondment period during the second year of the project in the Department of Biology of the University of Pisa in Italy. I will be spending a total of 2 months there in the group of Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi, the Ecology and Marine Biology unit, to learn more advanced analytical techniques that can improve the understanding of my dataset.

 

The research team

Francesca Rossi, the supervisor. She is a CNRS researcher initially working as part of the UMR MARBEC in Montpellier and now working for the UMR ECOMERS in Nice.  She is a benthic ecology expert also largely involved in seagrass research. She will have the main supervising role for this project and will actively contribute to its implementation and success.

Vasilis Dakos, the modeler. He is a CNRS researcher working as part of the UMR ISEM in Montpellier. He is an expert in theoretical ecology and modelling. He will provide complementary supervision throughout the project and particularly during the second part to create the model and analyse the data in more details.

 

Vincent Ouisse, the benthos and local expert. He is an IFREMER researcher working as part of the UMR MARBEC in Sète. He is a benthic ecology expert and participates in the yearly macrophyte monitoring campaigns of the Mediterranean lagoons, including our field site. He will provide complementary supervision for the implementation of the field experiment, logistics and local knowledge on the processes occurring in the Thau lagoon.

Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi, the conceptual expert. He is a professor and researcher from the University of Pisa, head of the Ecology and Marine Biology unit. He will be collaborating on this project for the advanced analysis of field data and to help get a general understanding of the seagrass response patterns measured during our field experiment.

Laura Soissons, the fellow and main actor of this project. That’s me! My role will be to execute and lead all aspects of the project for the next two years. Click here for more information about my background and interests.