Supervisors and Co-supervisors

Supervision plays a key role in doctoral education. Supervisors provide feedback, guidance and support to PhD students to successfully complete their research project. The VDSEE has a number of highly experienced supervisors who provide excellent infrastructures and conditions for carrying out research.
Candidates are invited to contact our faculty members and discuss their research projects and ideas with them.
All our supervisors have agreed to the  Code of Good Practice for Doctoral Schools.

Supervisors by Research Group

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  • Archaea Biology and Ecogenomics
    • Christa Schleper
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Archaea ecology and evolution CRISPR defense systems
      Contact
    • Silvia Bulgheresi
      Research Areas: Environmental Cell Biology
      Contact
    • Simon Rittmann
      Research Areas: Archaea Physiology and Biotechnology
      Contact
    • Filipa Sousa
      Research Areas: Early Evolution of Life
      Contact
    • Melina Kerou (co-supervisor)
      Research Areas: Ammonia oxidizing archaea
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Bio-Oceanography and Marine Biology
    • ­Gerhard J. Herndl
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Biological Oceanography, Marine Biogeochemistry and Marine Environmental Change
      Contact
      Website
    • Federico Baltar
      Research Areas: Biological Oceanography and Marine Biogeochemistry
      Contact 
      Website
    • Monika Bright
      Research Areas: Marine Biology, Microbial/Eukaryote Mutualism and Zoology
      Contact
      Website

    • Pedro Frade, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Corals and Coral reef science; Coral biology, Ecology and Evolution; integrated Systematics, Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics; Biodiversity, Symbiosis, Microbial Ecology and host-associated microbes; invertebrate Zoology
      Contact

    • Petra Heinz
      Research Areas: Paleoecosystems and Marine Micropaleontology
      Contact
      Website

    • Martin Zuschin
      Research Areas: Conservation Paleobiology and Historical Ecology
      Contact
      Website
    • Thomas Reinthaler (co supervisor)
      Research Areas: Marine Microbial Biogeochemistry
      Contact
      Website
    To the Research Group
  • Environmental Change and Biodiversity
    • Stefan Dullinger
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Global Change, Biogeography and Biodiversity
      Contact
    • Franz Essl
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Bioinvasions, Global Change and Macroecology
      Contact
    • Karl Hülber
      Research Areas: Plant Marcoecology
      Contact
    • Leyla J. Seyfullah
      Research areas: Plant Evolution and Paleobotany
      Contact
    • Thomas Wrbka
      Research Areas: Ecosystem Research; Nature Conservation; Geoecology; Biodiversity Research; Agroecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation; Botany, Vegetation Science, Plant Ecology; Geoinformatics
      Contact
    • Martin Zuschin
      Research Areas: Conservation Paleobiology and Historical Ecology
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Evolutionary Anthropology
    • Gerhard Weber
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Human Evolution and Primate Morphology
      Contact
    • Martin Fieder
      Research Areas: Evolutionary Demography, Migration and Integration, Evolution of Religions, Bioinformatics and Statistical Genetics, Research and higher Education Management and Human Cooperation
      Contact
    • Ron Pinhasi
      Research Areas: Ancient DNA genomics of human populations across the world during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with a strong link to physical anthropology and archaeology; aDNA from sediments and pathogen aDNA as well as on the genomics of domesticated species and commensals.
      Contact
    • Sylvia Kirchengast
      Research Areas: Body composition and health; Migration and Health; Biological, evolutionary and social aspects of teenage pregnancies; etc.
      Contact
    • Katrin Schäfer
      Research Areas: Human Behavioral Biology and Evolutionary Aesthetics
      Contact
    • Harald Wilfing
      Research Area: Human Ecology
      Contact
    • Elmira Mohandesan (co-supervisor)
      Research Areas: Ancient DNA (Paleogenomics), Animal Domestication, Population Genetics, Phylogenetics, and Conservation Biology
      Contact
    • Katerina Douka
      Research Area: Radiocarbon Dating and Paleoproteomics
      Contact
    • Thomas Higham
      Research Areas: Radiocarbon Dating, Archaeological Science, Palaeolithic archaeology, chronology, Neanderthals and Denisovans
      Contact
    • Martin Kuhlwilm
      Research Area: genomics, admixture, primates incl. humans
      Contact
    • Sabine Eggers
      Research Area: Paleopathology, Paleonutrition
      Contact
    • Pere Gelabert Xirinachs (co supervisor)
      Research Area: Social Genomics, Health and Animal interactions in the past
      Contact
    • Mareike Stahlschmidt
      Research Areas: Microarchaeology, Fire Use Evolution, Environmental DNA, Archaeological Site Formation
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Evolutionary Zoology and Palaeobiology
    • Andreas Wanninger
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Animal morphology, Development and Evolution
      Contact
    • Jürgen Kriwet
      Co-Speaker
      Research Areas: Vertebrate Evolution, Morphology and Diversity Patterns
      Contact

    • Pedro Frade, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Corals and coral reef science; coral biology, ecology and evolution; integrated systematics, phylogenetics and phylogenomics; biodiversity, symbiosis, microbial ecology and host-associated microbes; invertebrate zoology
      Contact

    • Elisabeth Haring, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Evolutionary genetics, biodiversity, molecular systematics (animals), molecular phylogenies, phylogeography, population/conservation genetics, DNA barcoding genetic monitoring
      Contact
    • Harald Krenn
      Research Areas: Integrative Zoology and Insect Morphology, 
      Contact
    • Luise Kruckenhauser, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Population and Conservation Genetics, Species Delimitation, Molecular Systematics, Phylogeography, Biodiversity, genetic Monitoring, Evolution of cave fish and DNA barcoding of Molluscs
      Contact
    • Anja Palandačić, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Population and conservation genetics, species delimitation, molecular systematics & taxonomy, phylogeography, biodiversity, museum and ancient DNA analysis
      Contact
    • Thomas Schwaha
      Research Areas: Animal Morphology and Evolution
      Contact
    • Gerhard Steiner
      Research Areas: Invertebrate Phylogenetics and Evolution
      Contact
    • Tim Wollesen
      Research Areas: Marine Invertebrates
      Contact
    • Frank Zachos, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Biodiversity, Phylogeography, Population/Conservation genetics of mammals and birds, Species concepts, Theoretical foundations of taxonomy, History and Philosophy of Biology
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Limnology
    • Christian Griebler
      Speaker
      Research Area: Groundwater Ecology
      Contact
    • Clemens Karwautz (co-supervisor)
      Research Area: Biofilms, Enviromental microbiology 
      Contact
    • Katrin Attermeyer
      Research Areas: Carbon cycling and freshwater microbial ecology
      Contact
    • Stephan Glatzel
      Research Areas: Wetland Ecology and Management
      Contact
    • Hubert Keckeis
      Research Areas: River and fish ecology
      Contact
    • Robert Ptacnik
      Research Areas: Aquatic Biodiversity, plankton ecology; lecturer in multivariate statistics
      Wassercluster Lunz
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Molecular Evolution and Development
    • Ulrich Technau
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Molecular Evolution and EvoDevo
      Contact
    • Grigory Genikhovich
      Research Areas: Evolution and molecular mechanisms of pattern formation in development
      Contact
    • Thomas Hummel
      Research Areas: Molecular and cell biological regulation of brain development in Drosophila, Neurobiology, Evolution and Development
      Contact
    • Roger Revilla-i-Domingo
      Research Areas: Stem cells, early animal evolution and deep-sea sponge ecology
      Contact
    • Oleg Simakov
      Research Areas: Comparative and regulatory genomics
      Contact
    • Qi Zhou
      Research Areas: Sex chromosome evolution
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Molecular Systems Biology
    • Wolfram Weckwerth
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Molecular Systems Biology
      Contact
    • Verena Ibl
      Research Areas: Plant cell biology in crop seeds
      Contact
    • Ingeborg Lang
      Research Areas: Structural and functional plant cell biology
      Contact
    • Stefanie Wienkoop
      Research Areas: Plant-Microsymbiont Interaction
      Contact
    • Claudia-Christine Jonak
      Research Areas: Plant evolutionary stress physiology 
      Contact
    • Peter Schlögelhofer
      Research Areas: Meiosis in plants, Control of meiotic DNA double-strand break formation, homologous recombination, DNA repair
      Contact
    • Steffen Waldherr
      Research Areas: Computational Methods for Bio-/Chemical Processes
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Plant Evolutionary Biology
    • Jürg Schönenberger
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Diversity and Evolutionary Biology of Flowers
      Contact
    • Andreas Bachmair
      Research Areas: Protein modification in plants, Plant stress responses, Plant molecular biology
      Contact
      Website
    • Agnes Dellinger
      Research Areas: Pollination ecology, pollen analysis, floral biology, geometric morphometrics, plant morphology and ecology
      Contact
      Website
    • Friðgeir Grímsson
      Research Areas: Paleobotany, paleoecology, palynology and plant-animal interactions
      Contact
      Website
    • Michael Kiehn
      Core Facility Botanical Garden
      Research Areas: Angiosperm Karyosystematics, Phylogeography and Speciation; International Conventions and Plant Conservation
      Contact
    • Gerald M. Schneeweiss
      Research Areas: Plant Systematics and Evolution
      Contact
      Website
    • Hanna Schneeweiss
      Research Areas: Plant Evolutionary Cytogenetics
      Contact
      Website
    • Leyla J. Seyfullah
      Research areas: Plant evolution, Palaeobotany
      Contact
    • Norman Wickett
      Research areas: Plant diversity and speciation
      Contact
    • Martina Weber, emer.
      Research Areas: Palynology
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Theoretical Evolutionary Biology
    • Mihaela Pavlicev
      Speaker
      Research Areas: Developmental evolution, reproductive biology, evolvability, evolutionary medicine
      Contact
    • Joachim Hermisson
      Research Areas: Population Genetics
      Contact
    • Philipp Mitteröcker
      Research Areas: Theoretical evolutionary Biology, evolutionary Medicine and Biometrics
      Contact
    • Frank Emmanuel Zachos, Natural History Museum Vienna
      Research Areas: Biodiversity, Phylogeography, Population/Conservation genetics of mammals and birds, Species concepts, Theoretical foundations of taxonomy, History and Philosophy of Biology
      Contact
    • Brian Metscher
      Research Areas: 3D-Imaging, 3D-Modeling, Evolution, X-ray Computed Tomography
      Contact
    To the Research Group
  • Tropical Ecology and Animal Biodiversity
    • Konrad Fiedler
      Research Areas: Zoology and animal ecology
      Contact
      Website
    • Christian H. Schulze
      Research Areas: Conservation Biology, ecology, biodiversity, conservation, species diversity, sustainability, ecosystem ecology, natural resource management, ecology and evolution and invasive species
      Contact
      Website
    To the Research Group