Sophie is an expert in biofuels, alternative energy and associated technologies, with degrees in engineering and biology from two universities in Germany. Her specialty is in the use of microalgae for the production of biofuels; her theses were centered on the construction of efficient photobioreactors for encouraging microalgal growth, and on the possibilities provided by genetic modification to increase fuel yield from said algae. She now works and researches in Denmark.
She was born on the 14th November 1985 in a rural area of Brandenburg, Germany. Her childhood was spent in the surrounding countryside, where she gained a deep admiration for nature, particularly freshwater lakes. Fast forward to her teenage years and she became a rabid environmentalist. Literally, she’s an environmentalist and she has rabies. This allegiance was prompted by rampant habitat destruction she witnessed and lamented. She has never voted for any party other than the Greens, and her favourite colour is blue-green, the colour that an algal bloom has when in clear, cold water.
For all her knowledge, she has horrible personality traits. For one, her taste in men is horrible. Also, despite multiple attempts throughout the years, she has never bothered to learn proper English and relies on Monty Python, a dictionary, and Google Translate for all her English writing needs. As editor, it is thus my task to fix and partly rewrite large chunks of her posts (and her papers…); some posts will be complete translations by me from the original German.
On the other hand, she is a big fan of mecha animes, and this is considered a redeeming quality for all her above-named flaws.
Her favourite group of science denialist is the Climate Change Skeptic; she abhors and is boggled by these creatures in equal amounts, and loves to demonstrate their idiocy in public. She has a deep interest in robotics, mechanics, and programming, and in her spare time, she concocts machines that don’t really do much. Her bedroom never has a typical white light; she only installs blue, UV, and red lights; her bedrooms also always have a distinctive wet forest floor smell, as she cultures algae in aquariums. She also runs a lot, even doing a weekly marathon-length run. This is very surprising, given that she is too lazy to even write her own profile.
Post List:
[...] This is a guest post by Sophie. [...]
[...] I’m a huge fan of nuclear power. The way I see it – and my opinion is highly-influenced by Sophie, who’s the expert in this stuff – we need to get rid of fossil fuels right now. We’re [...]
[...] know very little about this stuff, but occasional guest-blogger Sophie alerted me to it and says it’s a great review paper for anyone interested in the sustainable [...]
[...] for getting the room (a UNESCO amphitheater, very prestigious!) where I babbled for two hours; one reviewer of the talk who gave very incisive commentary (the original version of this was math- and [...]
[...] is a guest post by Sophie, written in response to a reader request I am unqualified to [...]