Laura Warmuth in a submersible at a Deep Sea Expedition at the Chagos Archipelago, Indian Ocean. Image © Denise Swanborn.
Laura Warmuth has had a career that has seen her travel the globe to some of the most beautiful places imaginable. And she’s not finished yet.
Originally from Germany, Laura Warmuth has studied in her home country, Australia and Papua New Guinea, the UK, and the USA, and is now doing a PhD at the University of Oxford. Here she talks about her early life and career path to date culminating in her latest research which looks at ocean connectivity in the Western Indian Ocean.
“Like a lot of marine biologists, I always wanted to study this subject after my first couple visits to an aquarium. I grew up in Germany, in southern Bavaria between the cities of Munich and Stuttgart, so quite far away from any sea, but learning to swim in the Mediterranean Sea and visiting aquariums is what really got me into marine science and marine biology.
“That was always the default, but at school in Germany you can pick if you want to do sciences or languages as your main focus in high school and up until A level I focused more on languages, just because I was more into travelling.
“But I always had marine biology in mind, I was always interested in biology as a science and I picked that as my main science throughout school and during my A levels. So I did two short summer holiday internships during the end of high school at a local university and an NGO. These were on my own initiative via emails and not part of a programme, and they gave me lots of experience and contacts with researchers.
“From my own experience, I would encourage students to email and reach out to local organisations of interest during school and university. Contacts can also easily be made at university open days. This approach continued during university and I did another internship during my third year of undergrad at the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen.”
Fieldwork at the Marine and Oceanographic Research Station, Calvi, Corsica. France. Image © Nico Michiels.
Undergraduate
“I then started out in university doing an undergraduate in biology. I thought it made sense to get a wider base to pick biological sciences as a whole and to then focus on a masters, for example, into the more marine side of things, in case I found something exciting where I would perhaps change my path.
“The university I chose, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, was in the southwest of Germany, far from the sea, but they had an ecology department that did marine research and I knew they did field trips to the coast. I knew I could get opportunities there.
“You do all the basics in your first couple of years and then you can design your focus in terms what you want to concentrate on. I went towards ecology and marine biology and was then able to do my undergrad thesis in Corsica, France, and I was able to dive for that, because during my undergraduate, I got my diving licence as well.
“So even though I studied in southwest Germany, I stuck with my marine wish from the start, I was able to do it as my thesis and then I knew that was the area I want to be in. At the end of my undergraduate degree I was prepared to do a field work project where I could dive and do practical field work in the sea.”
Fieldwork at the Nago Island Marine Research Facility, Papua New Guinea. Image © Katie Sambrook.
English-speaking
“I also knew I wanted to prepare for an international job in an English-speaking country and, given that I was set on my marine biology research, I thought Australia really was that paradise. There’s lots of research there and I thought it a really good opportunity to take the wider biology background and really focus on marine biology only.
“Because of that I decided to do a postgraduate certificate, which is a kind of short master’s that takes around nine months, where you get a lot of feedback and diving experience. It meant I now had coral reef experience and I got more set on tropical ecology.
“I arrived at James Cook University in Australia in 2017 just as a major global bleaching event was happening which meant any research really had to include climate change.”
Magnetic Island, Queensland, Australia. Image © Laura Warmuth.
A close-knit community
“I then looked back to Europe for a longer master’s and found the University of Essex, where they do tropical marine biology. Essex was one of the few UK universities that is tropically focused and you do a one-year master’s where there is a three-month thesis at the end of the first nine months. You go on an expedition and get field work experience.
“The tropical marine biology community in the UK is really quite close-knit; there’s a conference in London (Reef Conservation UK) that everyone goes to, and so that really developed my network in the UK and Europe.
“After that master’s, I got a position at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in North Carolina in the US to work on marine protected areas. That was a research associate position where I could apply what I had learned.
“It was more theoretical with no fieldwork, but it was using a lot of data trying to find out how we could design effective marine protected areas, answering questions like, does it always have to be a case of no or low impact, or are we able to allow certain types of fishing at certain times and still get a good ecological as well as social outcome?”
Field course at Hoga Island, Wakatobi National Park, Indonesia. Image © Laura Warmuth.
A PhD in Oxford
“After that I wanted to continue to do research and do a PhD and that is how I ended up at the University of Oxford. There’s a lot of work being done here on coral reefs and the Indian Ocean, and a lot of people who organise expeditions and fieldwork. There are the connections to fieldwork people and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) so that you still get practical experience, but you also get the theoretical background as well as the doctoral training programme (DTP).
“The marine biology community is small, but there are hotspots everywhere, and you have to be a bit flexible and happy to live in these hotspots if you want to work in the area. It is a friendly and casual community; a lot of people know each other, everyone is into fieldwork and into diving. From professor to undergraduate, it is very casual, friendly, and welcoming.”
Brasenose College, University of Oxford, UK. Image © Laura Warmuth.
The future
“As to the future, it really depends on what opportunities come up. I’m not necessarily determined to stay in Oxford; I’m happy to stay in the UK or in Europe, but I’m equally happy to go to Australia or the US. I’ve looked at a few post docs anywhere between Hawai’i and Sydney and again, you have to be flexible even worldwide.
“It’s about finding the most interesting project as well as a place where I can imagine living and I’m quite open to where that might be.”
