Karin Lochte

So they started building iDiv and I initially was also as an external member a little bit involved in this and I really cherish what they managed to build up in Leipzig very much.

But a few years later, must have been 2015 or so, the then director of Alfred Wegner, which was Karin Lochte, contacted me and said, Helmut, I'm seeing what's going on there in Leipzig is really great, but for obvious reasons, there's actually no marine component in there.

So shouldn't we kind of revive our ideas and see whether we can build something without... external funding from our own resources.

So the first idea we actually had was not so much building a new institute, but actually bringing the biodiversity researchers from Alfred Wegener Institute, Essen Helmholtz Center and the University of Oldenburg together.

Very cool.

Yeah.

And so, so you mentioned us, who actually was us, who submitted it? I mean, Karin Lochte.

Yeah, so we set up a team of 11 applicants, five from Altrit Wegener Institute, five from University of Oldenburg, no six from the University of Oldenburg.