Anya Waite
CEO & Scientific Director, Ocean Frontier Institute, Canada
Dr. Anya Waite is Associate Vice-President Research (Ocean) of Dalhousie University and Scientific Director and CEO of the Ocean Frontier Institute. Previously, she served as Section Head of Polar Biological Oceanography at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven and as Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Biology at the University of Bremen.
After completing a B.Sc. in Biology in 1985 at Dalhousie, she obtained her Ph.D. in 1992 in Biological Oceanography at UBC. She then held postdoctoral positions at WHOI (USA) and the Victoria University (New Zealand) and spent almost 20 years as an engineering professor at the University of Western Australia. Waite is co-chair of the prestigious Global Ocean Observation System steering committee – the first woman at the head of this body since its creation in 2011. She also sits on the boards of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster and the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR).
She is on the Editorial Board of the international journal Limnology and Oceanography, co-chair of the SCOR Working Group on biological observation systems, “P-OBS”, and was on the Steering Committee of the Southern Ocean Observation System (SOOS) from 2017–2020.
Speakers & Moderators
Kristin Burmeister
Postdoctoral Researcher in Physical Oceanography, Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS), UK
Angelika Dummermuth
Science Manager, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany
Karen Evans
Principal Research Scientist, Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia
Britta Knefelkamp
Head of Department “Marine Nature Conservation”, German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Germany
Lilian Anne Krug
Scientific Coordinator, Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean & NF-POGO Alumni Network for the Ocean, Portugal
Nelson A. Lagos
Director, Centro de Investigación e Innovación para el Cambio Climático, Universidad Santo Tomás, Chile
Aisa O. Manlosa
Postdoctoral Researcher, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Bremen, Germany
Natalie Prinz
Doctoral Assistant, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Waikato, Aotearoa, New Zealand
Vladimir Ryabinin
Executive Secretary, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO
Subrata Sarker
Assistant Professor, Department of Oceanography, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh
Sophie Seeyave
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean, United Kingdom
Alexander Turra
Coordinator, UNESCO Chair on Ocean Sustainability (Brazil) and Full Professor, IOUSP, Brazil
Karen Wiltshire
Vice Director, Alfred Wegener Institute & Director, Biological Station Helgoland, Germany
Jialin Zhang
Knowledge exchange specialist & project manager, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Germany
Christa von Hillebrandt-Andrade
Deputy Director, International Tsunami Information Center, Caribbean Office, Puerto Rico
Jeanne Izard Everett
Director Programs and Operations, Blue Climate Initiative, Tetiaroa Society, USA
Oda Keppler
Deputy Director-General „Sustainability, Provision for the Future“ of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany
Claudia Schultz
Research Associate, Project Management Jülich, Marine and Maritime Research, Geosciences and Shipping (MGS), Bonn
Renate Duckat
Science Journalist at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Project Management Jülich, Bonn, Germany