Michal Kucera holds the chair of Micropalaeontology and Paleoceanography at the University of Bremen. He is also a project leader in the Center for Marine Environmental Research – MARUM. After his undergraduate studies at the Charles University in Prague, where he earned a BSc (1993) and a MSc (1994) in Geology and Paleontology, he obtained a PhD in Marine Geology (1998) from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he began his university career in 2000 at the Royal Holloway University of London, initially as a lecture, then as a reader (2003) and as a professor of marine micropaleontology (2004). He left London in 2005 to take on the chair of micropaleontology at the University of Tübingen and moved to his current position at the University of Bremen in 2012. His research combines studies of biodiversity, ecology and physiology of living foraminifera, a geologically important group of marine microorganisms, with the investigation of their fossil record as archive of evolution and climate change. Using computer-assisted image analysis techniques, his early work provided new evidence for rates and patterns of morphological evolution in marine organisms, with applications for biostratigraphy and paleoclimatology. His interest in quantitative statistical approaches resulted in the development of new approaches and concepts in the field of microfossil transfer functions, a key proxy for reconstructions of past ocean temperature. His paleoceanographic work contributed to the understanding of global change in climatically sensitive marginal seas such as the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Arctic. Realising that the development of microfossil-based proxies requires detailed knowledge on the ecology and diversity of the organisms, he developed keen interest in molecular genetics and marine ecology and the resulting work helped discover and characterise genetic diversity in foraminifera and their ecology in the water column. His research relies on empirical data obtained in the field, from sediment cores or in the plankton, and to this end, he carried out field and seagoing expeditions covering all oceans and the polar regions. Throughout his career he published more than one hundred peer reviewed articles; edited three special issues and served on several editorial boards. As past president of The Micropalaeontological Society, co-chair of a SCOR Working Group on Modern Planktonic foraminifera and Ocean Change, and member of the steering boards of PAGES and PMIP3, he strives to promote community engagement in research and education on micropalaeontology and its applications.
Germany