WSA congratulates Prof. Dr. Linda Weiss on her professorship at RUB

Inaugural lecture "Molecular Mechanisms of Phenotypic Plasticity: Adaptive Responses Meet Global Change" on January 28, 2026

We are delighted to announce the appointment of our WSA member Prof. Dr. Linda Weiss to the professorship of Global Change Ecology at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). Since January 1, 2026, she has been strengthening the Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology with her expertise in ecological research and teaching. In her inaugural lecture, she gave an impressive presentation of her work on the effects of environmental stress on predator-prey relationships in freshwater ecosystems – a topic of great importance in view of climate change and anthropogenic influences.

Linda Weiss began her academic career at RUB, where she studied biology and received her doctorate from the International Graduate School of Neuroscience in 2011. This was followed by research stays at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and in Birmingham, UK, among others, before she returned to RUB as a group leader in 2016. For her outstanding achievements, she was awarded the Walther-Arndt-Research-Prize of the German Zoological Society in 2021 and habilitated in zoology and ecology in 2022.

In her research, Prof. Weiss combines molecular, neurobiological, and ecological approaches to understand how ecological interactions and adaptation mechanisms are affected by global environmental change. For example, she investigates how key species such as Daphnia respond to changing environmental conditions and what consequences this has for food chains and ecosystem functions.

She is also heavily involved in teaching, particularly in the interdisciplinary master's program in biodiversity, which is offered jointly with the University of Duisburg-Essen.

The WSA congratulates Prof. Dr. Linda Weiss on this significant appointment and wishes her continued success in her research and teaching!