[Summer Course 2025] Climate Change and Marine Ecosystems with Croucher Foundation

Course Title: Climate Change and Marine Ecosystems

Program Period: 29th June - 4th July

Summary

This five-day summer course aims to provide students with a systematic and comprehensive overview of the impact of global climate change on ocean ecosystems, with a particular focus on the newly developed ecological models that utilize new ecological theory and big data AI technologies to understand the ecological processes from cellular to ecosystem scales.

About

Oceans play a vital role in the global carbon cycle by acting as a sink for the increase in atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel burning and other processes. Notably, the ‘biological pump’, the suite of processes by which some of the carbon taken up by phytoplankton in surface waters is transferred to and stored in the deep ocean, reduces atmospheric CO2 by 200 ppm relative to what it would be with an abiotic ocean.

Rising air and ocean temperatures due to the well-known greenhouse effect produce a warmer and more stratified upper ocean, which reduces nutrient mixing into the surface and the downward transport of oxygen to deeper water. Warming can also directly affect the metabolism and physiology of marine organisms and the integrity and function of marine ecosystems. All these climate change impacts have direct ramifications for the ocean's functionality in making planet Earth habitable and the economic value of ocean ecosystems.

Summer courses in this series have been taught every other year since 2013, generally emphasizing climate impacts on the structure and functioning of marine microbial communities. The 2025 course will focus on multi-omics in marine biology and ecology. The course lecturers have broad combined expertise in developing and applying various types of bioinformatic techniques - amplicon, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and proteomics - to investigate the responses of marine organisms and ecosystems to changing ocean conditions. Participants can expect daily lectures, supplemented by workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, and hands-on computer programming. With a small class size and multiple instructors, the course places special emphasis on student-faculty interactions.

The course is limited to 30 postgraduate or early career participants and will be conducted in English.

Recalling the Summer Course in 2023

Director

Prof. Hongbin Liu (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HK, China)

Co-director

Prof. Michael Landry (the University of California, San Diego, USA)

Instructors

Prof. Natalie Cohen (Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, USA)

Prof. Frederic Partensky (Station Biologique de Roscoff, France)

Prof. Zhili He (Sun Yat-sen University, China)

Prof. Shengwei Hou (Southern University of Science and Technology, China)

Details of the course admin for enquiries

Course admin: Jiawei Chen

Email address: jchenek@connect.ust.hk

Phone number (for internal use): 852-67493730

Course admin: Lixia Deng

Email address: ldengae@connect.ust.hk

Phone number (for internal use): 852-94031909

Applications

• More details and register at the official announcement page of Croucher Foundation.

• The deadline will be 5 p.m. on 24th May, 2025.

Fees

• Residential places on the HKUST campus and meal coupons will be provided during the course period.

• Travel grants OR registration fee waivers are available for application upon the course director's approval. Please email marinesc@ust.hk for more details.

• A registration fee of HKD3000 will be charged upon successful application.