Corina Brussaard appointed professor

30-05-2013   Dr Corina Brussaard of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) has been appointed Special Professor of Viral Ecology at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She will deliver her inaugural lecture on Friday 7 June.

Corina Brussaard studies the role viruses play in the sea, combining field work and detailed laboratory studies. New methods have been developed recently for the rapid detection of viruses and for measuring cell death in micro-organisms as a consequence of viral infections. This has provided new insights into the influence of viruses on the productivity of marine ecosystems, the entire community of plants and animals living in a particular part of the ocean. A viral infection causes the death of a single-celled host. Viral infection thus stimulates the conversion of organic carbon in the form of the particles that make up the host to dissolved organic carbon, and this leads to the recycling of nutritive salts that are essential for algal growth. This, in turn, means that in higher trophic levels fewer food is available for, for example, fish.

Dr Brussaard's research group currently focuses on studying the interaction between viruses and their hosts in relation to climate change, and more specifically on how this interaction is affected by environmental factors, such as CO2 concentration and temperature, the availability of nutrients and light. Part of this research is conducted in the new Dutch lab at the Rothera Research Station in Antarctica.

As a Special Professor, Dr Brussaard will in the coming years further enhance collaboration between NIOZ and the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) of the UvA. She will commit herself to linking her own research into microbial viruses to the research clusters and priorities of the IBED and the UvA in fields such as biodiversity, element cycles, co-evolution under changing environmental conditions and systems biology. This will give an impulse to IBED research into the interaction between virus species and their environment and it will further strengthen marine research at the UvA. Corina Brussaard will also teach courses, especially in the fields of virus ecology, microbial ecology, and biological oceanography.

Dr Brussaard has been working at NIOZ since 2000 and she has been a senior scientist in the field of marine viral ecology since 2003. Before that, she worked as a postdoc at the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Bergen, Norway. She did a PhD on algal cell death at the University of Groningen. Dr Brussaard is the vice-president of the international Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and of the International Society for Viruses of Microorganisms (ISVM). She is also an editor at the journal FEMS Microbiology Reviews.

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Inaugural Lecture:
Corina Brussaard will deliver her inaugural lecture at the Aula of the Lutheran Church, Singel 411, 1012 XM Amsterdam at 4.30 p.m. on 7 June. If you wish to attend her inaugural lecture, please be present no later than 4 p.m. as her lecture is preceded by an inaugural lecture by Dr G. Muijzer.
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More information:
Corina Brussaard, +31 222 369 513, or +31 6 22 78 14 19
Nienke Bloksma, NIOZ Communication: +31 222 369 460 or +31 6 53 49 47 14