Dr. Ralf Schiebel, born 1965, is Professor in Geology at Angers University, France, since 2008. After studying and completing his PhD thesis at the Geology Department at Kiel University in 1992, he started work on planktic foraminifers at the lab of Ch. Hemleben at Tubingen University, Germany. In 2000, he accepted a position as Oberassistent at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and in 2005 he joined the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, as a Lecturer in Paleoceanography. His main areas of research include the ecology, biogeochemistry, and paleoceanography of foraminifers. He is developing new methods in microscopy and image analysis in Earth sciences. Dr. Schiebel has participated in many research cruises to the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, Caribbean, and western Pacific.
Dr. Christoph Hemleben, born 1938, retired from his professorship in Geology and Paleontology at Tubingen University in 2002. He did his MSc (Diplom) at Munich University in 1964, and completed his PhD at Tubingen University in 1969. He has been extensively working on the biology, biomineralisation, and paleoceanography of foraminifers. He has published more than 100 papers in micropaleontology and sedimentology. The Springer-Verlag released his first book on Modern Planktonic Foraminifera together with Michael Spindler and Roger Anderson in 1989. He participated in more than 20 research cruises, on many of them as chief-scientist. With his retirement he
stopped teaching, but is still supporting research on an international level and co-authoring scientific publications.