Press release: International awards for researchers at the Göttingen Campus
No. 134 - 04.09.2025
Dr Anggi Hapsari and Dr Oliver Barnstedt each receive an ERC Starting Grant
Two researchers at the Göttingen Campus have been awarded ERC Starting Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). Ecologist Dr Anggi Hapsari from the University of Göttingen receives funding of around two million euros for her project "SaLtedPeat: Potential impact of sea level rise related salinization on lowland tropical coastal peatlands". Neuroscientist Dr Oliver Barnsted from the European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen (ENI-G) receives funding of around 1.5 million euros for his project “LearnMamBo: Neuronal dynamics of learning and memory in the mammillary body“. Both projects will run for five years.
Sea level rise due to climate change poses a threat to coastal ecosystems. Flooding with salty seawater and storm surges causes salinization of the soil and water. Freshwater ecosystems in particular, such as the Southeast Asian peatlands, are highly sensitive to this salinization but have been neglected in research to date. Hapsari's recent research revealed an unexpected link between historical sea level rise and fires in the distant past. This led to the hypothesis that the rise in salinity at that time may have killed the Southeast Asian peat swamp forests, producing large amounts of burnable dead wood—however, there is too little information to either support or disprove this hypothesis. In addition, there is almost no research on the consequences of increasing salinization of Southeast Asia's peatlands, which makes it difficult to predict the effects of sea level rise.
In the SaLtedPeat project, Hapsari and her team will investigate the effect of salinization on the freshwater-rich coastal peatlands of Southeast Asia and confirm the hidden fire risk of sea level rise. Changes in the environmental factors along the transitional zones between freshwater peatlands and neighboring saline ecosystems will also be documented. The researchers also want to find out how sensitive peat swamp forests and the properties of peat itself are to increasing salinity. These changes caused by rising sea levels and their impact on the carbon stocks present in the bog will be modeled in the project. "A major focus is to understand what happens if the salinity level of freshwater forested deep-peat forming wetlands increases,” Hapsari explains. “This project will enable us to gather essential and timely new insights about coastal peatlands’ vulnerability to sea level rise, which can contribute in developing strategies to maintain or grow carbon stocks; to maintain habitats for biodiversity; and to minimize fire-induced air pollution.”
The mammillary body is one of the first regions of the brain to be attributed a role in memory function. This small “brain nucleus” is important for episodic memory, which stores personal experiences and events, and is affected in dementia diseases such as Alzheimer's or Korsakoff's syndrome, a severe memory disorder. The mechanisms that lead to memory formation and loss in the mammillary body are still largely unclear. “Much of the memory research in the brain to date has focused on the hippocampus, a structure that plays a key role in retrieving and forming memories, while other involved and connected brain regions have been neglected – often due to technical difficulties,” says Barnstedt, head of the “Multiscale Circuit Analysis” working group at ENI-G, a collaboration between the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences, and a member of the Cluster of Excellence “Multiscale Bioimaging: From Molecular Machines to Networks of Excitable Cells” (MBExC).
“In our project, we use state-of-the-art imaging and physiological techniques to uncover and explain these mechanisms in the mammillary body,” says Barnstedt. "Our two main technologies are two-photon calcium imaging and optogenetics. The former allows us to observe hundreds of nerve cells in the mammillary body simultaneously as they form and retrieve memories over several days. Based on the activity of the nerve cells, we can map exactly which nerve cells store memories and track how they are used by the rest of the brain. The latter allows us to selectively activate or deactivate cell groups during the formation or retrieval of memories using light pulses, thereby influencing memory function. With their work, the researchers will contribute to elucidating the neural mechanisms of memory formation in the mammillary body and associated structures, thereby creating new therapeutic approaches for dementia.
Contact:
Dr Anggi Hapsari
University of Göttingen
Albrecht von Haller Institute for Plant Sciences
Phone: +49 551 39-25729
Email: anggi.hapsari@uni-goettingen.de
Web: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/480229.html
Dr Oliver Barnstedt
European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen (ENI-G)
Phone: +49 551 39-61341
Email: o.barnstedt@eni-g.de