Dr. Hauke Harms
professor
Department of Environmental Microbiology
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
Germany
Biography
Dr. Hauke Harms is a biologist and Head of the Thematic Area Environmental Engineering and Biotechnology as well as of the Department of Environmental Microbiology at the UFZ in Leipzig. He also holds the chair for Environmental Microbiology at the University of Leipzig. He has been spokesperson for the "Terrestrial Environment" programme in the Helmholtz research field "Earth and Environment" since 2014. His research focuses on the ecology and ecophysiology of microbial communities in soils, surface water and technical systems and on the design of biotechnological procedures which are based on complex microbe populations and exploit ecological principles. In 2010 he was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize for the development of ARSOlux, a biological test kit for the analysis of arsenic in drinking water. Hauke Harms has been chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max-Planck-Institute for Marine Microbiology since 2016.
Research Interest
Dr. Hauke Harms is interested in the ecology and ecophysiology of microbial communities involved in Ecosystem services such as the conversion of pollutants and biomass in soil, water and technical systems. It is my goal to address these processes from an ecological perspective and to propose ecological principles for environmental biotechnology development. Special emphasis is put on the link between microbial diversity in structured habitats and the reliability of their functioning. An ultimate goal is to propose biotechnological processes that are as self-sustained as natural ecosystems and their application for environmentally sound biotechnology.
Publications
-
Rohwerder, T., R. H. Müller, M. T. Weichler, J. Schuster, T. Hübschmann, S. Müller, and H. Harms. 2013. Cultivation of Aquincola tertiaricarbonis L108 on the fuel oxygenate intermediate tert-butyl alcohol induces aerobic anoxygenic photosynthesis at extremely low feeding rates Microbiology SGM. 159: 2180-2190
-
Giebler, J., L. Y. Wick, A. Chatzinotas, and H. Harms. 2013. Alkane degrading bacteria at the soil-litter interface: Comparing isolates to T-RFLP based community profiles. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 86: 46-58
-
Saleem, M., I. Fetzer, H. Harms and A. Chatzinotas. 2013. Diversity of protists and bacteria determines predation performance and stability. ISME J. 7: 1912-1921.
-
Paufler, S., M.-T. Weichler, H. Harms, and T. Maskow. 2013. Simple improvement of the sensitivity of a heat flux reaction calorimeter to monitor bioprocesses with weak heat production. Thermochimica Acta. 569: 71-77
-
Koch, C., S. Müller, H. Harms, and F. Harnisch. 2014. Microbiomes in bioenergy production: From analysis to management. Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 27: 65-72.
