Annika Vaksmaa

Dr. Annika Vaksmaa is VENI Research Fellow and Confidential Advisor in the Microbiology and Biogeochemistry Department at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. She earned her PhD in Microbiology from Radboud University, the Netherlandsand has over 15 years of research experience in different countries such as Estonia, Denmark, Oman, and the Netherlands. She is a carbon cycle-focused field and laboratory microbiologist interested in the role of marine microbes and fungi in transforming hazardous hydrocarbons such as methane, oil, and plastics in our ecosystem. She is an expert in assays with isotopically labelled 13C compounds, bioreactors, cultivation of aerobic and anaerobic microbes, GCMS, IRMS, FTIR, 16S rRNA-based microbial community analyses, qPCR, nanoSIMS, and SEM. She has published several research papers in peer-reviewed journals and a recipient of various international research grants.