06.01.2017 | The Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology – short ZMT – has changed its official name to Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research. Since January 1st, 2017, the non-university research institute is operating under the name of the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) GmbH in the commercial register. The name change reflects the growing interdisciplinary spectrum of natural and social science at ZMT.
Founded in 1991 the institute became a member of the Leibniz-Association in 2009. Since then ZMT has evolved into an internationally renowed institute with a wide spectrum of disciplines and more than 200 employees.
More than 25 years ago ZMT started with three scientists from the disciplines of fisheries biology, modeling and ecology, while today the workforce of ZMT unites sedimentologists, hydrologists, ecologists, biologists, biochemists as well as theoretical ecologists and modelers, economists, sociologists and anthropologists.
The initial goal was to create a scientific base for the sustainable use and protection of tropical coastal ecosystems and to build close cooperations in research, education and consultation with national and international partners. In order to fulfill this mandate, ZMT has successively met the challenge of interdisciplinary thinking while maintaining disciplinary depth.
“The specification on tropical marine ecology in the old name of the institute no longer fully reflects our scientific scope. Today, the research of ZMT is much more diverse and no longer limited to ecology. With our name change we want to make our deliberately chosen holistically research approach visible,” Prof. Dr. Hildegard Westphal, Scientific Director of the ZMT explains.
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