Dr hab. Agata Weydmann-Zwolicka from the Institute of Oceanography has received a prestigious scholarship from the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission in the Senior Award 2019/20 category.

As part of her research scholarship and in cooperation with researchers from the Department of Marine Sciences and the Institute for Systems Genomics at the University of Connecticut, she will be implementing the project entitled “The impact of atlantification on Arctic zooplankton: application of modern genomics methods". The main scientific objective of the project is the study of the impact of climate change and so-called atlantification of the Arctic on the biodiversity of zooplankton in the region affected by the West Spitsbergen Current which transports Atlantic water and plankton organisms into the Arctic. Particular stress will be devoted to the less studied taxonomic groups and groups whose size and biomass will probably undergo change as a result of global warming. The project also aims to devise a methodology based on metabarcoding, one of the latest techniques in molecular biology which in future will allow for a relatively fast and inexpensive assessment of the qualitative composition of plankton and a detailed identification of the diversity of selected taxonomic groups present in midwater.

Agata Weydmann-Zwolicka has been employed at the Division of Marine Plankton Research of the Institute of Oceanography since 2014, having previously worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Sopot where in 2010 she defended her PhD (prepared in cooperation with the University Centre in Svalbard). She has been studying the application of molecular methods in the research into the Arctic zooplankton since her graduation from two fields of study at the University of Gdańsk: Oceanography at the present Faculty of Oceanography and Geography and Biotechnology at the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology.