Prof. Dr. Niels de Winter was awarded a VENI grant to develop new research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from the Dutch Research Council. Niels is a former AMGC'er who obtained his PhD in 2019 at the VUB with Philippe Claeys. He is now a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
His project is call "MACRO: More Accurate Climate Reconstructions from Fossil water in Bivalve Shells". As Niels demonstrated during his PhD, and re-emphasized first as Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at Utrecht University then as a Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) post-doctoral researcher, bivalve shell do record as they grow detailed climate parameters that are key to understand and model future climate scenarios. The aim of this project is to measure tiny water droplets trapped in the CaCO3 crystals that form the shell of these organisms. These analyses will deliver new information about how these shell grow and preserve ancien paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental signatures.