International honor for University of East Anglia ocean ...( An environmental scientist from the ...)

An environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia (UEA) has won a prestigious international prize for her outstanding contribution to oceanography.

Prof Karen Heywood will be awarded the Georg Wst Prize at a meeting of the European Geophysical Union assembly in Vienna on Wednesday April 22 at 19:15 local time.

During 25 years of successful field work at sea, Prof Heywood, of UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, has significantly advanced our knowledge of the ocean as an essential part of the Earth's system.

She has led numerous cruises from the Nordic Seas to the Southern Ocean, developing novel research methods including remote sensing - and carrying out sophisticated data analysis.

Her findings have significantly advanced our understanding of the causes and impact of climate change.

"I feel greatly honoured and thrilled to be awarded this prize," said Prof Heywood. "Trying to understand how the ocean works is such fun and to be awarded a prize like this, for doing what I enjoy, is the icing on the cake. Really it is a tribute too to the great people in my research group over the years."

The Georg Wst Prize is awarded biennially by the German Society for Marine Research and the Springer journal Ocean Dynamics.

Born in 1890, Georg Wst was an early pioneer of oceanography. He is best known for his studies of the Atlantic Ocean which revealed the secrets of the deep ocean's stratification and circulation.

In a separate honour, Prof Heywood has also recently been elected the Physical Oceanography representative on the council of The Oceanography Society the international marine science society.

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