Anna van der Kaaden

Dr. Anna van der Kaaden is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University's Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, specializing in Environmental Sciences. Her research focuses on ecological interactions at ecosystem scales, particularly in deep-sea cold-water coral reefs and savannas. She investigates how local organism-environment interactions drive spatial patterns and resilience, using computational modeling and hydrodynamic analysis. Co-founder of science communication firm Anna-mAKe, she bridges academic research with public engagement. She teaches courses on ecosystem change and systems thinking at University College Utrecht and contributes to global sustainability science education.

• Affiliations: Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University
• Research Themes: Sustainable Ocean, Water-Climate-Delta Dynamics

Her groundbreaking work shows internal tides' critical role in cold-water coral mound formation and demonstrates scale-dependent feedback mechanisms shaping reef structures. Recent studies explore Arctic benthic communities and deep-sea food web paradoxes. Publications emphasize hydrodynamic-biological interactions and spatial pattern formation across marine and terrestrial systems.

Notable awards include the NIOZ Video Contest (2018) and Imagine Your Research Contest (2015). Active in science communication, her work appears in venues ranging from academic journals to public media. Supervises research projects on coral reef dynamics and systems analysis, offering expertise in computational modeling and marine data analysis.

Labs/Teams: Involved in deep-sea coral research networks and interdisciplinary sustainability teams at Utrecht University. Collaborates with institutions like Aarhus University on ecosystem modeling projects.