Linda (she/they/he) is currently a PhD candidate at the Ocean Systems Department of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Utrecht University in the Netherlands, but has also recently taken up an industry position as a geologist and environmental scientist to work on contaminated soil and groundwater in addition to their research activities.

Linda obtained her MSc in Environmental Sciences from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, where he won the Postgraduate Student of the Year 2015 Award and studied the relationship between ocean currents and the chemical composition of Holocene deep sea coral skeletons. Since then Linda’s research mainly focused on elements in marine biogenic carbonates such as corals, foraminifera or bivalve shells and how their concentrations or isotopic composition relates to the environmental conditions during the growth of the carbonate mineral. If these relationships are known, fossil specimens can be used to reconstruct the climate of the past. Linda first got interested in this topic during their undergraduate studies in Geosciences at University of Bonn, Germany, which she originally started to become a paleontologist after being fascinated/obsessed with dinosaurs from a very young age. Soon they discovered that dinosaurs are indeed very interesting, but that there is so much more we don’t yet know about paleo-environments, so he decided to help filling these gaps. In their spare time, Linda enjoys tabletop games, horror movies or hanging out with her two cats.