Appy Sluijs

Institute of Environmental Biology, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University
Position:  

http://fastfacts.nl/content/appy-sluijs-paleoklimatoloog


Appy Sluijs (1980) is an Assistant Professor in the Biomarine Sciences group, at the Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University. Sluijs studied biology and Biogeology in Utrecht and at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA,. In 2006 he obtained his Ph.D. cum laude in Utrecht. Subsequently he received a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO), and was appointed to a tenure Assistant Professor position at Utrecht University from January 2010. He is a member of a research group that carries out research on the full range of marine sciences, in close collaboration with researchers in Utrecht, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and a large international suite of institutes.

Sluijs is a member of The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007, he was awarded the Outstanding Young Scientists Award of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). He was the youngest scientist ever to receive this prestigious award. He also received the prestigious Vening Meinesz Prize for young geoscientists in 2010. He is a member of the editorial board of the leading geosciences journals Geology, published by the Geological Society of America (GSA), and het is an editor of the recently started open access journal Climate of the Past, published by the European Geosciences Union.

“My primary research interests include climate and ecological change in the geological past. My research particularly focuses on reconstructing temperature, marine ecology, hydrology, biogeochemical cycles and sea level during periods that were characterized by rapidly increasing, or generally high concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Together with students and colleagues, I combine micropaleontological and geochemical (both inorganic and organic) techniques to quantify and understand the functioning of planet Earth under ‘greenhouse’ conditions. The results provide the ultimate tool to test the performance of climate and biogeochemical models under such conditions. More recently, I have started to work on the biogeology of an important but understudied group of marine protists, dinoflagellates. The biogeochemistry of dinoflagellates and their fossil remains (dinocysts) is dependent on sea water CO₂ concentrations and pH; a relation we aim to develop into a proxy to reconstruct marine carbon cycling and ocean acidification in the geological past.”