Lyell Centre for Earth and Marine Sciences, Heriot-Watt University
Chair for UK National Committee to Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR)
2025-present
Alex is Professor of Marine Ecology and Biogeochemistry based at the Lyell Centre in Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh). He is a sea-going biological oceanographer with research interests in the role of plankton ecology in the (re)cycling of the crucial elements for life in the ocean.
Alex completed a PhD in Biological Oceanography at the University of Southampton (2002) and a postdoc working on the Atlantic Meridional Transect (2002-2006) before leaving to become a self-employed plankton taxonomist (2007-2008). He returned to Southampton in 2009 with a NERC Fellowship (2009-2011) based in the National Oceanography Centre and stayed on as a Senior Research Fellow (2012-2016) and eventually a Principal Researcher (2016-2017). He (finally) left Southampton in 2017 to join the newly built Lyell Centre, one of Heriot-Watt’s Global Research Institutes, as an Associate Professor. Alex was Deputy Director for the Lyell Centre (2020-2023) and promoted to full Professor in 2023. Over the last 27 years he has participated in 23 research expeditions, from polar waters in both hemispheres to tropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Alex joined the UK SCOR National Committee in 2023 as an ordinary member, before becoming Co-Chair in 2024 and taking over as Chair in 2025. Alex is also a co-convenor for the MASTS Marine Biogeochemistry Forum and the Primary Assembly representative for Heriot-Watt in the University of the Arctic.
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