University Ghent, Belgium

Belgium Youth Steering Committee

After finishing her Msc. degree in Geography, Mieke studied an additional year focusing on marine and lacustrine sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. After this, she enrolled in a PhD program, working on paleoclimate and environmental reconstructions in South America and Antarctica. These reconstructions are based on the analysis of fossil diatoms & pigments in sediment cores from several lakes. Mieke is being supervised by Prof. Wim Vyverman and Dr. Elie Verleyen from the Lab for Protistology and Aquatic Ecology. Dr. Verleyen is now involved in research on the biogeography of diatoms, and as Mieke is a geographer, she is doing the GIS-analyses with respect to this research.