Dr. ir. Veerle Huvenne is Principal Researcher at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK, where she coordinates the Seafloor Ecosystems team. Originally trained as Bio-Sciences Engineer at Ghent University in Belgium, she holds an MSc in Oceanography from the University of Southampton and a PhD in Marine Geology from Ghent University. She has >20 years of experience in the fields of habitat mapping and sediment dynamics, with the aim to develop an understanding of complex deep-sea environments such as submarine canyons, cold-water coral settings, hydrothermal vents and seamounts. She is particularly interested in the study of deep-sea vertical cliffs, their dynamics and communities.

Dr Huvenne has extensive sea-going expertise, particularly working with new technologies and marine robotic systems such as AUVs and ROVs. She often works closely with engineering teams on the development of new sensor or vehicle capabilities. Dr Huvenne has participated in a wide range of national (UK) and international (EU) projects. She was Principal Investigator on the ERC Starting Grant CODEMAP (www.codemap.eu) and is currently leading the habitat mapping workpackage in the H2020 project iAtlantic, in addition to collaborating in several national programmes (CLASS, ACCORD, BioCam). She co-initiated and co-coordinates the INCISE network on submarine canyon research (www.incisenet.org).