Funding
This PhD was funded by the European Union as part of the projects SEAQuester, BioEcoOcean and OceanICU and supported by the Simon’s Foundation.
PhD defence
PhD defence by Athanasios Kandylas
Athanasios Kandylas will defend his PhD thesis, “Carbon Sequestration and Oxygen Minimum Zones in the Ocean”.
On Friday, 20 March 2026, at 13:00, Athanasios Kandylas from DTU Aqua will defend his PhD thesis, “Carbon Sequestration and Oxygen Minimum Zones in the Ocean”.
You can follow the defence online on Zoom via this link or in person at DTU, building 208, auditorium 53, 2800 Kongens Lyngby.
Athanasios Kandylas’s PhD thesis introduces SISSOMA which is a platform that enables researchers to track the fate of small organic particles in the ocean from their production in the upper layers to their export into deeper layers.
The ocean plays a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate, acting both as a reservoir of carbon and as an emitter of carbon by releasing carbon back to the atmosphere. Photosynthesizing phytoplankton and their predators, zooplankton, produce organic particles in the upper ocean, which sink to the deeper layers of the ocean, where the carbon is stored. This process helps mitigate the effects of human-induced climate change.
However, organic particles are also involved in releasing carbon back to the surrounding water as microbes feed on them, consuming oxygen and producing carbon. Combined with the oxygen replenished through the circulation of the ocean, this defines the oxygen availability in the deep ocean. Athanasios Kandylas’s research shows significant negative local effect on oxygen levels with the potential of expanding areas already suffering from low oxygen.
Examiners
- Professor Colin Stedmon, DTU Aqua (chair)
- Professor Hans Burchard, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Germany
- Professor Morten Hvitfeldt Iversen, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany
Chair of defence
- Senior Researcher Sigrun Huld Jonasdottir, DTU Aqua
Supervisors
- Principal Supervisor: Professor Andre W. Visser, DTU Aqua
- Co-supervisor: Professor Ken H. Andersen, DTU Aqua
Learn more
A copy of the thesis is available for reading at DTU Aqua. Please contact PhD Coordinator Susan Zumbach Johannesen, szjo@aqua.dtu.dk