ProfessorBernd Suresbernd.sures@uni-due.de; Bernd.Sures@nwu.ac.za
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Prof. Bernd Sures is a Professor (W3) in Aquatic Ecology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, head of the research group Aquatic Ecology, and holds a visiting position with the Water Research Group at the North-West University, South Africa. The research of Bernd Sures is of immense societal relevance. At its core, it focuses on understanding the occurrence and effects of multiple stressors in aquatic ecosystems, which is essential for comprehending healthy ecosystems. These, in turn, are a crucial part of a healthy environment and fundamental to human well-being. Professor Sures is nationally and internationally renowned for his outstanding research in parasitology and ecotoxicology, with over 250 internationally peer-reviewed articles documenting his work. Many insights into parasites and their significance, including assessing the ecological state of our environment, are attributed to his pioneering efforts. As the spokesperson for the DFG Collaborative Research Center 1439 “Degradation and Recovery of Freshwater Ecosystems Under Multiple Stressors – RESIST” (https://sfb-resist.de/), incorporating many of his research questions, he works with an interdisciplinary, excellent research team on one of the most pressing issues of our time: How do environmental stressors impact the biodiversity and function of our waters, and how can ecological restorations succeed optimally? |
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Prof. Glyn Howatson is a Professor in Human and Applied Physiology and Dean of the Graduate School at Northumbria University, and holds a visiting position with the Water Research Group at North-West University, South Africa. His research centres on physiological stress, recovery, and adaptation — examining how biological systems respond and adjust to stressors at cellular, physiological, and whole-organism levels. This mechanistic understanding of the stress-recovery-adaptation continuum informs his work across human performance, exercise physiology, and nutritional intervention, whilst providing a translatable framework for understanding adaptive responses across a diverse range of biological systems. This comparative approach extends to investigating physiological stress responses in aquatic species, where understanding how organisms manage and recover from environmental and physiological stressors offers valuable insight into the adaptive capacity of biological systems. Complementing this, Glyn's work with chimpanzees explores the structure and function of the cardiovascular system from an evolutionary biological perspective, seeking to understand how cardiovascular physiology has been shaped over evolutionary time and what this reveals about great ape cardiac health and comparative physiology with humans. |
ProfessorGlyn Howatsonglyn.howatson@northumbria.ac.uk
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ProfessorNiel L. Bruce
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Prof. Niel Bruce is an Honorary Research Officer with the Biodiversity & Geosciences Program at Queensland Museum and holds a visiting position at the North-West University Water Research Group, South Africa. Niel Bruce is a world expert on marine isopod crustaceans, a group of small sized, abundant and diverse crustaceans related to crabs and shrimp. His research began with an Honours thesis on the taxonomy of isopod crustaceans from the Red Sea. That interest in tropical crustaceans has continued to the present day. Niel has written more than 150 scientific papers, numerous reports and popular articles including five monographs and two edited books. He has worked at the Smithsonian Institution, Australian Museum, Zoological Museum in Copenhagen as Curator of Crustacea and most recently at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand as head of the Marine Invertebrate Biodiversity and Collections programs. Niel joined the Queensland Museum in 2007 as Senior Curator at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. Niel's research continues to focus on the taxonomy, systematics, biogeography and biodiversity of tropical marine isopods, both free living and parasitic forms. He has described or redescribed more than 400 species, 40 new genera and three new families of marine isopod. Present research focuses on Great Barrier Reef isopods, using this work as the basis for higher level revisions of Australian isopods. The recent prime focus of work has been the systematics of the Asellota (a group of small isopods) from Australian coral reefs, funded by ABRS and CReefs–BHP Billiton. The other primary research focus, through graduate students, is revisions of fish parasitic isopods of Southern Africa and Australia Queensland Museum research collections of coral-reef isopods have been built from extensive field work on the Great Barrier Reef, and throughout the Indo-Pacific from Fiji and Papua New Guinea, the Great Barrier Reef, Western Australia and the Western Indian Ocean at South Africa, Mauritius, Zanzibar and Kenya. |
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Prof. Luc Brendonck is a Full Professor at the University of Leuven (KUL), and holds an extraordinary Professor position with the Water Research Group at North-West University, South Africa. The research group of Luc Brendonck (Animal Ecology, Global Change & Sustainable Development) studies various aspects of the ecology and conservation of small aquatic systems, especially temporary wetlands and rock pools. These systems are used to assess diversity patterns in relation to environmental gradients and as models to study fundamental ecological, biogeographical and evolutionary processes. There is a special focus for the systematics and evolutionary ecology of enigmatic groups from temporary wetlands, such as large branchiopods and annual killifish. With Nothobranchius killifish, we specifically focus on their behavioural biology and develop applications in ecotoxicology. The research group is intensively involved in university development cooperation, especially with research and training in aspects of the conservation and sustainable use of aquatic resources (also including lakes and rivers), mainly in Africa. |
ProfessorLuc Brendonck
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ProfessorYoshinori Ikenakay_ikenaka@vetmed.hokudai.ac.jp
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Yoshinori Ikenaka is the Deputy Director of the One Health Research Center at Hokkaido University, Japan. He specialises in Environmental Toxicology work. Subjects of research include:
1) Study on mechanism of species differences in sensitivity to toxicological chemicals.
2) Toxicity evaluation and monitoring of environmental pollutants in wild animals in Africa.
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Professor Mary Gulumian holds an honorary professorial post in the Haematology and Molecular Medicine Department at the University of Witwatersrand where she presents courses on Health Risk Assessment (nanotechnologies) and supervises postgraduate students. She is a founding member and past President of the Society for Free Radical Society of South Africa (SFRRSA) and the founding member and President of the Toxicology Society of South Africa (TOXSA). She is also the founding member and the President of the SRA-Africa. Mary was also a member of the final review board of World Health Organization (WHO) Concise International Chemical Assessment Documents publications on a number of toxic compounds. She was also appointed by the Minister of Science and Technology (DST, now DSI) to serve as a Council member of the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions (SACNASP). She has further provided expert consultation to industry and government departments on the toxicity of chemicals in the working and ambient environments. In 2011, Mary received a Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Particle Toxicology during the 11th International Particle Toxicology Meeting, Singapore. |
ProfessorMary Gulumian
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ProfessorPaul C. Sikkel
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Paul Sikkel, PhD is a Research Professor at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Sciences in the Department of Marine Biology and Ecology. His current research focus is on the ecology of host-parasite interactions in coral reef systems. His international research program includes sites and collaborators in the Caribbean, Philippines, Africa, Australia, and the Mediterranean. His team is a strong supporter of the integration of the arts and sciences and collaborates regularly with artists and musicians world-wide to broaden the impact of their research. |
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Dr Rachel Welicky is an Assistant Professor of Ecology at Neumann University in Aston, Phillidelphia, USA. She teach general biology, ecology, environmental science, and scientific writing. As a trophic ecologist with expertise in fish and parasite ecology, Rachel explore the dynamics of fish parasitism as a consumer–resource interaction and how anthropogenic and global change processes modulate this relationship. Her work has taken her from the depths of coral reefs to the heights of museum shelves. |
Senior LecturerDr Rachel Welicky
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ProfessorChristian Selbach
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Prof Chris Selbach is an Associate Professor in Ecological Parasitology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His research focusses on the question of how parasites interact with their environment and function as integral components of ecosystems. His work furthermore focuses on digenean trematodes that parasitize a wide range of vertebrate and invertebrate hosts. He has studied the role of these ecologically important parasites in various ecosystems to better understand their contribution to the systems’ biodiversity, energetics and food webs, their role in species invasion processes, as well as their medical relevance as human pathogens. |
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Björn Schaeffner completed his Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne (Australia) in 2014. He since spent a combined 9 months in Budweis (Czech Republic) at the Czech Academy of Sciences and a total of 3 years in Sao Paulo (Brazil) at the University of Sao Paulo as a postdoctoral fellow. His main research interests as a parasitologist revolve around the systematics, diversity, biogeography, and coevolution of endoparasitic helminths, predominantly cestodes (tapeworms), that parasitise bony and cartilaginous fishes in marine and freshwater environments around the globe. He joined the team of the WRG in March 2018 and has since focused on the understudied biodiversity of cestodes infecting chondrichthyans (sharks, rays, and chimaeras) in two, distinct marine provinces of southern Africa using an integrative taxonomy approach. Dr Schaeffner is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine and part of the Aquatic Animal Medicine team at St. George Univeristy, Grenada. His main area of research revolves around the captivating world of fish parasites, with a primary focus on their evolutionary history, systematics, and biodiversity. Prior to joining SGU, Dr. Schaeffner served as a Research Scholar at the Institute for Experimental Pathology (Keldur) of the University of Iceland. |
Assistant ProfessorBjörn Schaeffner
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Senior Project ConsultantDr Lizaan de Necker
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Lizaan completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Johannesburg before joining the Water Research Group in 2016, where she completed her PhD. Her interests lie in understanding how climate change, invasive species, human pressures, and natural events such as droughts and floods influence freshwater ecosystems and aquatic biota. She is also interested in the relationship between environmental change and neglected tropical diseases in Africa. Her work makes use of experimental studies, multiple lines of evidence, and a range of data analysis techniques to better understand ecological patterns and processes in the natural environment. |
| Ruan Gerber completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Johannesburg and was awarded the HJ Schoonbee medal from the UJ Zoology department for his thesis. Broadly his interests include studying the ecotoxicology of aquatic ecosystems with a focus on how humans are affecting aquatic biota from the cellular to the ecosystem level. Ruan also completed his Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) degree at the NWU Business School. His involvement in research regarding anthropogenic impacts, climate change and sustainability has led to the conclusion that to make a real difference in the world he believes the corporate environment to be a crucial nexus in the fight against climate change and creating a truly sustainable world. It motivates him to make a valuable contribution to individuals, society and the world and make a positive difference and impact in each of these aspects. |
Environmental Scientist, Sustainable Development Coordinator & ESG ProfessionalDr Ruan Gerber
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Last updated: June 2026
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