Meet the Team

Veerle Huvenne

  • Marine geoscientist specialised in habitat mapping
  • As CODEMAP project leader, Veerle coordinates the project
  • Veerle will also coordinate work packages WP1 and WP3

Daniel Jones

  • Benthic biologist, specialised in benthic ecology; Dan is leader of the SERPENT project
  • Within CODEMAP, Dan coordinates work package WP2, comparing the new methods with traditional biodiversity measures

Tim Le Bas

  • Marine geologist and geophysicist, specialised in acoustic seabed mapping
  • Tim will develop the methodology for AUV backscatter and sidescan sonar processing
  • In addition, Tim keeps an eye on the data management and GIS of the project

Steve McPhail

  • Underwater systems engineer, head of Autosub6000 team
  • Steve is responsible for the further development of the Autosub6000 AUV (work package WP4), to allow the sideways mapping and to provide high-resolution optical datasets

Katleen Robert

  • Katleen is a benthic biologist who moved over from Canada to write her PhD here at NOC; she has plenty of experience in habitat mapping
  • In her PhD, she focussed on predictive habitat mapping in submarine canyons – she analysed imagery transects to map megabenthic invertebrate distributions and determined which environmental factors, mostly derived from acoustic survey techniques, are most useful in explaining the spatial structure observed
  • Katleen has now taken up a position as post-doctoral researcher within CODEMAP, applying her skills to the problem of habitat mapping in 3 dimensions (WP4)

Khaira Ismail

  • Marine geologist, and the second PhD student in our team; Khaira’s PhD work focuses on examining habitat heterogeneity as proxy for biodiversity in deep-sea complex environments
  • Within CODEMAP, she develops top down techniques for objective deepsea marine landscape mapping, derivation of habitat heterogeneity indices and quantification of fuzzy boundaries

Claudio Lo Iacono (associate team member)

  • Claudio came to the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton as a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, and  was previously based at the CSIC in Barcelona. He now has a permanent position at NOC as Principal Scientist.
  • He has a vast range of experience in acoustic seafloor characterization, quantitative backscatter analysis and image segmentation for integrated seafloor classifications – his expertise strengthens our team

Veit Hühnerbach (previous member)

  • Marine geologist with more than 20 years experience in acoustic seabed mapping and classification
  • Veit supported CODEMAP in its first 2.5 years as web manager and research scientist
  • He has now left the team for pastures new