Lucie Cassarino

Role:

  • Member-At-Large, 2021-2022
  • UK Antarctic Heritage Trust Representative, 2020-2021
  • Secretary & UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, 2019 – 2020

Contacts:

Background:

Current position: Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Bristol.

I graduated with a BSc in Environmental and Marine sciences, speciality Biogeochemistry from the Centre of Oceanography of Marseille (part of University Aix-Marseille II, France) in 2011 during which I have worked with the Laboratory of Microbiologie, Géochimie et Ecologie Marine (LMGEM) and the Mediterranean Surfrider Foundation.

For my Master’s degree, I decided to move to Brest to enrol the Marine Chemistry MSc degree at the Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer (IUEM), University of Bretagne Occidentale, that I have graduated in 2014. During these two years, I have entered the world of stable isotopes with a first short project working on the methane isotopic analysis with a new technique using the Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy and apply this technique to the Congolobe campaign. My second project introduces me to the world of silicon and the West Antarctic Peninsula. I was looking at the influence of water mixing on the silicon isotopes in the surface water of samples from the RaTS program. This project led me to my PhD for which I have moved to the University of Bristol (UK). I had the chance to spend a few weeks on the James Clark Cook along the West Antarctic Peninsula and stopped at few stations such as Rothera during austral summer 2015/2016 to collect seawater and sediment samples. I graduated my PhD entitled “From micro to macro: the fractionation of the silicon isotopes during biogenic opal formation” in February 2018 and since then I am a post-doctoral research associate investigating the biogeochemical cycle of silicon using silicon isotopes. I’m particularly investigating how silicon biomineralisation in diatoms and sponges, sediment/pore waters interactions and ocean mixing affect the silicon isotopes fractionation to better constrain the silicon isotopes as a proxy.