Melanie Habermann

portrait

Current Research:

I started my PhD at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity and the University of Oldenburg in August 2022. My work since than focused on the stability and reactivity of food webs. I want to develop new approaches to the dynamics of ecological systems using reactivity as a measure of robustness and hypergraphs as conceptual framework. My work will build on recent advances in dynamical systems theory and network sciences of higher order networks.

Vita:

My academic interests were always primarily in natural sciences. There was hardly anything that I found more fascinating and exciting than that. I decided to get a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences at the University of Oldenburg, where I focused particularly on mathematical modelling. After graduating, I stayed in Oldenburg to delve deeper into the subject and continued with a master's degree in environmental modeling. Here my main emphasis was on process and system-oriented modelling, ecological models and oceanography. The topic of my master thesis was to test the master stability function approach for ecological metacommunities. I also did several jobs as a teaching assistant in maths, modelling, and programming, and worked as a student assistant at the Fraunhofer IWES as backend programmer.

About me:

I like cats, books, and maths. Not always in that order but always these three things. Nature fascinates me, the complexity, the beauty, what we know about nature and all the things we don’t that still need to be found. If I needed to describe myself, I’d say I’m all about creativity. For me, maths and modelling are actually some of the most creative fields to work in. The way to think about the world and how to translate nature into mathematical models is an art of its own. I also draw and paint, like to try new materials and techniques whenever I can. When it comes to style, I’m drawn to realism and I am now trying to use my skills for scientific illustrations. So, if you need anything and want to get in touch, please do! I’m happy for every opportunity.