Meet the Penguiness team


After a PhD and 10 years at the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research Yan entered the CNRS in 2008 and joined the CEBC in 2015 where he is now a director of Research. He studies the marine ecology of seabirds with a special emphasis on using penguins as sentinels of environmental changes. A PEW fellow since 2017 he collaborates with the WWF-UK and he is heavily involved in the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the International bio-logging society (to name only a few).

Akiko is a specialist of ecology and behaviour of seabirds using bio-logging approaches. After working as a researcher at National institute of Polar Research, Japan from 1993 to 2008, she joined CNRS at Strasbourg in France as an engineer of research in 2009 and then moved to the CEBC in 2015. She is interested in studying the foraging behaviour of penguins and other seabirds in relation to environmental changes.

Grant is a marine ornithologist and data scientist who has an interest in applications of machine learning in ecology and oceanography. He has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary projects over the last decade ranging from seabird interactions wtih environmental factors, to modeling the distribution of plants at high resolution around New Zealand. Grant is the director of (Black Bawks Data Science), Director of Science of Oceanites, and vice-chair of the World Seabird Union.

Currently the marine renewables manager for NatureScot, Alex has a strong interest in the interactions between seabirds and marine renewables (including offshore windfarms and tidal turbines). She has worked in a variety of field situations in Alaska and all around the United Kingdom and has a broad depth of knowledge of North Atlantic seabirds. Her PhD thesis included a thorough review of the diving behaviour of UK seabirds and she is an expert on translating science to policy advice in Scotland.