Project team

Martin is the principal investigator of the project and professor of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna. His main research focus is on Conservation Palaeobiology using the Cenozoic fossil record of Europe, the modern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. He completed his PhD-thesis on the Red Sea (1997) and now works on Pleistocene and Recent coral reefs, along with reef-associated molluscs and brachiopods.

Angelina is the PhD student in the Red Sea project. She grew up in Austria but spent every summer on the Croatian coast. This sparked an early fascination for the marine environment and resulted in a dream to become a marine biologist. After finishing her BSc in ecology (University of Vienna, AUT), she therefore completed a semester in Marine Biology at James Cook University (AUS) and finished her MSc in Marine Sciences in Utrecht (NL). She has also been a passionate diver for many years and could not be more excited to study fossil and modern corals in the Red Sea. 

Andreas is co-supervisor in the Red Sea project and led earlier reef courses to the Red Sea and Maldives Islands with Martin. His field expertise is indispensable during our fieldworks! When he is not on fieldwork in the Red Sea, he is a researcher and curator at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria. His main research interests are echinoderms, with a focus on their phylogeny, nomenclature and systematics of echinoids. Being a palaeontologist with a strong interest in bridging the gap between life and earth sciences, he is actively involved in various efforts to ease access to biodiversity and taxonomic data on echinoids.

 Former students

  • Julia Mayr
  • Sebastian Valerio
  • Anna Haider
  • Felix Puff

 Cooperation partners

  • Basher Hamed (Faculty of Petroleum and Minerals, Al Neelain University, Khartoum, Sudan)
  • Wolfgang Kiessling (Section Palaeoenviromental Research, GeoZentrum Nordbayern, Universität Erlangen−Nürnberg, Germany)
  • Rebecca Klaus (Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum Frankfurt, Germany)
  • Karl Kleemann (University of Vienna, Austria)
  • Abbas Mansour (Geology Department, Faculty of Science, South Valley University, Egypt)
  • Paolo Montagna (CNR-ISMAR Institute of Marine Science, Italy)
  • John Pandolfi (ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)
  • Edwige Pons-Branchu (LSCE/IPSL - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, France)
  • Götz Reinicke (German Oceanographic Museum, Stralsund, Germany)
  • Bernhard Riegl (National Coral Reef Institute, Nova Southeastern University, Oceanographic Center, USA)
  • Nadia Santodomingo (NHM London, UK)
  • Marco Taviani (CNR-ISMAR Institute of Marine Science, Italy)