Ulrike’s doctoral research is focused on palaeoclimate and environmental reconstructions across the Early Eocene Climate Optimum (EECO). Therefore she is investigating assemblage and geochemistry variability of microfossils within a sediment core (16/28 Sb-01) from the eastern side of the Rockall Trough, which is part of the North Atlantic and the Irish continental shelf.
Previously Ulrike mainly worked on the morphology and ultrastructure of recent planktonic foraminifera to infer cladistic analysis and to elucidate the importance of the different morphologic characters for fossil-based phylogeny.
A second focus of her work was palaeocirculation reconstruction based on planktonic foraminiferal assemblage data in the Pleistocene (during the warm MIS 5e approximately 120 kyr ago) of the Red Sea.