Martin is the project leader and professor of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna. His main research focus is on conservation palaeobiology and historical ecology using the Cenozoic fossil record of Europe, the modern Mediterranean and the modern and Pleistocene Red Sea. His expertise is on molluscs and other benthic invertebrates and his main interest is in ecosystem stability and the impact of climate change on biodiversity over ecological and geological time scales.

Adam is a researcher at the Earth Science Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia, and a leading taphonomist with a special interest in the ecology and evolution of marine benthic ecosystems with brachiopods and molluscs. A large part of his recent scientific activities involves the development and application of models for time-averaging and preservation/fossilization dynamics of skeletal assemblages.

Michael Stachowitsch has been working as a benthic ecologist in the Northern Adriatic Sea since 1973. His scientific work culminated in his role as principal investigator in two FWF-projects in which he designed and deployed an underwater instrument that experimentally creates and documents the reaction of macrobenthic organisms to small-scale hypoxia/anoxia. The approach has been expanded to include meiofauna and sediment geochemistry.

Ivo was a PhD student in the "Historical Ecology of Northern Adriatic Sea" project and now is a researcher at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria. He had previously participated in two FWF-projects on northern Adriatic benthos as scientific diver and technical assistant. Many years of marine field-course-teaching experience in the northern Adriatic Sea additionally contribute to his profound knowledge of this unique habitat.

Rafał is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna interested in ecology, palaeobiology and taphonomy of marine benthic invertebrates. In his work, he applies methods of conservation palaeobiology to understand how the interactions between historical contingencies, climate change and human impacts regulate patterns in diversity and body size in marine ecosystems.

Konstantina is a senior postdoc at the University of Vienna. She is a geoscientist and paleontologist with an expertise of fish otoliths. Her work focuses on the impact of climatic and connectivity changes on the composition and structure of marine ecosystems in the geological past.

Michaela is a PhD student in the Adriatic Sea project. Her research focuses on changes in benthic communities and palaeoenvironmental analyses of shallow water deposits in the northern Adriatic Sea based on gravity cores from the Po delta. The integrated approach of the study combines paleontological data with taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical analyses.

Alexandra Haselmair, M.Sc.

Alexandra is a PhD student in the Adriatic Sea project. Previously she collaborated for multiple years in FWF-funded projects on the Adriatic ecosystems, involving scientific diving as well as data-processing. Her current research focuses on the temporal and spatial distribution patterns of high biomass epifauna in the northern Adriatic in order to reconstruct ecological shifts and the degradation of these communities due to anthropogenic impacts.

Isabella is a PhD student funded by the DOC Fellowship Programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her project focuses on reconstructing millennial-scale changes in growth rates and body size of northern Adriatic fishes based on coupled radiocarbon dating and sclerochronological analyses of fossil otoliths.

Bettina Bachmann, B.Sc.

Lukas Schweigl, B.Sc.

Lukas is a graduate student in the Adriatic Sea project. His thesis explores centennial- to millennial-scale changes in population size structure of benthic molluscs based on sediment cores from the northern Adriatic Sea. Paleontological data are combined with radiocarbon dating, sedimentological and geochemical analyses to discern potential drivers of size changes.