Victoria Warth Basso

Research team: Food from the Sea

Project: Future Feed Ingredients for Aquaculture

I am investigating how by-products from Norwegian food production can be better used as a raw material in salmon feed. I am looking at how much by-product material is available, how it can be processed into safe and nutritious feed ingredients, and how these ingredients affect growth, health, and welfare in salmon. The aim is to contribute to more circular and sustainable feed systems, reduce reliance on imported raw materials, and increase the use of Norwegian resources.

Main supervisor: Eva Falch

Co-supervisors: Rolf-Erik Olsen and Maria Lavrutich

Simen Løcka Eine

Research team: Observation Pyramid

Project: Modeling and evaluation of smart satellite-based services for monitoring and surveillance of ocean and coast

I work with the development of methods for on-board processing on small satellites to enable smart operations for monitoring of ocean and coast. NTNU SmallSatLab have developed and operate the two earth observation satellites HYPSO-1 and HYPSO-2. These satellites use a hyperspectral camera to monitor the ocean, with a goal of detecting and monitoring harmful algal bloom.

Like many similar satellites, the downlink speed is a bottleneck. This makes it important to process data with the limited on-board resources, to reduce data size or support satellite autonomy. The knowledge gained could help small earth observation satellites to gather more relevant data of higher quality within a shorter time span.

Main supervisor: Roger Birkeland

Co-supervisors: Milica Orlandić, Joseph Landon Garrett and Ole Andreas Alsos

Amanda Veronica Hausken

Research team: Ocean Health

Project: Biogeographical risk assessment of plastic pollution-induced cascade effects impacting coastal soil carbon storage ecosystem services

I  map where along the Norwegian coast marine plastic pollution accumulates (→ exposure) using machine learning in orthophoto analysis, and investigate whether important ecosystem services such as blue carbon sequestration are affected by the plastic (→ vulnerability) through systematic field sampling and laboratory analysis.

The knowledge gained from these two parallel studies will ultimately be integrated into a larger risk analysis (risk = vulnerability + exposure) and result in a map that identifies high-risk areas. Maps like this can help guide the optimization of resource use in plastic cleanup efforts, ensuring that funds are used in a socioeconomically sustainable way that benefits both nature and people as much as possible.

Main supervisor: Chantel Nixon

Co-supervisors: Martina Calovi and Peter Müller

Dominik Maximilian Schmid-Schickhardt

Research team: Life in Water and Observation Pyramid

Project: Transformer-based Underwater Acoustic Classification of Marine Mammals

Deep-sea ecosystems are poorly understood, yet monitoring them is vital to address the impacts of climate change, pollution, and noise. While passive acoustic monitoring offers a non-invasive solution, current analytical methods are manual, species-specific, and fail to scale.

My research develops deep learning models to detect and classify marine species. Marine soundscapes are computationally challenging: signals exhibit wide bandwidths alongside extreme temporal sparsity, compounded by background oceanographic noise and high intra- and inter-species vocal variability. This project aims to build scalable models capable of learning robust acoustic representations across diverse habitats.

​Based at the Department of Computer Science, I conduct this work in close collaboration with the Department of Biology – ensuring our computational models reflect ecological ground truths and translate into practical tools for marine scientists.

Main supervisor: Özlem Özgöbek

Co-supervisor: Ana Širović

Pernille Mari Walnum

Research team: Life in Water and The Gjærevoll Centre

Project: Uncovering patterns of the deep sea – Linking spatial patterns of deep-sea biological communities to human activities

I am working on mapping spatial patterns of deep-sea benthic communities, investigating how these patterns are related to the environment and how they overlap with human activities. This knowledge will contribute to a better understanding of these important communities and to our ability to predict how they will be affected by human activities and climate change. The project may also contribute to more efficient mapping of new areas and support the development of marine protected areas.
 
The project is carried out in collaboration with geographers and biologists at NTNU, the Gjærevoll Centre (more about the project), and the Institute of Marine Research (IMR/MAREANO).

Main supervisor: Aline Magdalena Lee

Co-supervisors: Martina Calovi, Francis Chantel Nixon, and Jonatan Fredricson Marquez (Institute of Marine Search) 

Effrosyni Fatira

Research team: Arctic and Polar, Food from the Sea, Life in Water, Observation Pyramid

Project: Integrated Assessment of Cod under Environmental Stress – STRESSCOD

Location: SeaLab

STRESSCOD is an interdisciplinary research initiative investigating the vulnerability of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) during early life stages to future climate-driven and anthropogenic stressors in the Subarctic Northeast Atlantic.

Main supervisor: Rolf-Erik Olsen

Co-supervisor: Kjell Inge Reitan

Natalie Maria Summers

Research team: Arctic and Polar, Coastal Community, Life in Water, Observation Pyramid, Ocean Health

Project: I will be working with the national Arctic Ocean 2050 (Polhavet 2050) project

My research focuses on bioptical properties of arctic algae and their photophysiology, which involves understanding the light environment in the Arctic as well as how the light is utilised by the algae. 

I am joining the summer cruise to the Arctic from 23rd July to the 10th September 2026.

Through this postdoc, I will be collaborating with researchers from different disciplines and departments at NTNU including:

• Marine technology (AUR lab) – sensors and platforms
• Cybernetics – hyperspectral satellites as part of the observation pyramid
• Civil and environmental engineering – ice physics and light
• Natural History, NTNU University Museum – marine biodiversity