Senior Project Scientist
At the ripe old age of 6 years, Stephanie was already convinced that she would one day become a marine biologist. She went on to study biology at the University of Kiel and spent her summers working as a volunteer at the sea turtle conservation project La Tortuga Feliz on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica between 2007 and 2009.
Stephanie’s fascination for the shelled sea creatures took her to Cape Verde in 2011, were she conducted field work for her master thesis dealing with the population structure of the local loggerhead population and its associated parasites.
Between 2010 and 2017, Stephanie worked at the Zoological Museum Kiel as a collection specialist and PhD student. To share her knowledge and passion for all living creature, she taught different zoology classes, and engaged in exhibition planning and science communication events.
After finishing her dissertation in the area of functional morphology in 2017, Stephanie joined the Olive Ridley Project Team as a Sea Turtle Biologist in Lhaviyani Atoll, Maldives.
Following her one year in the field in Maldives, Stephanie moved back to Germany to join the Zoological Museum in Hamburg, now part of the Leibniz Centre for the Analysis of Biodiversity change, and managed the Morphology lab on site until 2021. She is still an Associate Researcher with the Crustacea section to this day.
Besides the laboratory work, Stephanie focused on research project development with a special interest in sea turtle behaviour, population genetics, and external parasites and epibionts of sea turtles.
Since 2021, Stephanie has been the Senior Project Scientist for ORP, coordinating the ORP databases and research projects across all locations, working with the charity’s in field team, finding research collaborators, mentoring students, as well as consulting with the governmental and non-governmental stakeholders in the region on issues of sea turtle conservation.
