You, Me & HIFMB - Stories of Science and the Sea
Oct 1, 2026 · 47 min · 10 segments
In today's episode, we have our very own director Helmut Hillebrand! He chats to us about the history of how the institute was created (you can follow along here…
Helmut HillebrandGuestJan-Claas DajkaHost
No, this was actually something that I really have to load the building department of the university for because When we still didn't have the formal feedback on our application, they already had started to look for spaces.
And not far from the building we are in now, there was an office space that became available because the company moved out.
And they were extremely quick in laying their fingers on this and then offering it to us when we got the formal acceptance letter.
And then we moved to 2018, where then the first PhDs I actually had in April.
was not many at the beginning, but we started having the first projects coming in.
But I think we got the first project in 2018, 2019 and kind of built our staff further based on this third-party funding.
But we also had one of this postdoc pool position turned into a PhD student position.
And then in 2019, there was then the second symposium already in June again.
And in 2020, the first professor was actually hired, Thilo Gross, head of the biodiversity theory group.
And maybe, yeah, we never actually talked about, so we've talked to professors here on the podcast, so like Maren and Kim, for instance, but we never actually outlined the pillars, basically, the four groups that it's built on.
So we have biodiversity theory group, With Thilo Gross, then Kim Peters with Marine Governance, who came in April 2020.
And then we have Marin, who we already had on the podcast of Ecosystem Data Science and Ileana Baums in 2022 with Marine Conservation.
And those four groups, they were established during the first symposium or did they change somewhat?
No, this was actually something that I really have to load the building department of the university for because When we still didn't have the formal feedback on our application, they already had started to look for spaces.
And not far from the building we are in now, there was an office space that became available because the company moved out.
And they were extremely quick in laying their fingers on this and then offering it to us when we got the formal acceptance letter.
And then we moved to 2018, where then the first PhDs I actually had in April.
was not many at the beginning, but we started having the first projects coming in.
But I think we got the first project in 2018, 2019 and kind of built our staff further based on this third-party funding.
But we also had one of this postdoc pool position turned into a PhD student position.
And then in 2019, there was then the second symposium already in June again.
And in 2020, the first professor was actually hired, Thilo Gross, head of the biodiversity theory group.
And maybe, yeah, we never actually talked about, so we've talked to professors here on the podcast, so like Maren and Kim, for instance, but we never actually outlined the pillars, basically, the four groups that it's built on.
So we have biodiversity theory group, With Thilo Gross, then Kim Peters with Marine Governance, who came in April 2020.
And then we have Marin, who we already had on the podcast of Ecosystem Data Science and Ileana Baums in 2022 with Marine Conservation.
And those four groups, they were established during the first symposium or did they change somewhat?
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