Jens Herrle teaches at the Institute of Geosciences at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. He studied geology and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Tübingen in 2002. He spent the following years as a post-doctoral student at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland and as a Marie Curie Fellow at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (UK). From 2005 he joined the Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences at the University of Liverpool (UK) as a Lecturer and was appointed as an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) for micropaleontology at the University of Alberta, Canada. Since 2009 he is has a W3 University Professorship at the Goethe-University Frankfurt.
Herrle’s research interests are in the field of Ceno- and Mesozoic process studies of extreme greenhouse and icehouse conditions. He has established vibrant research collaborations across Canada and has recently participated in two expeditions to the high Canadian Arctic (Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere islands) with the goal of reconstructing the Cretaceous Arctic paleo-environment and climate history. His research includes bio-chemo-stratigraphic, paleoceanographic and paleoecologic (including culture studies) studies to gain rigorous insights into causes and consequences of major perturbations in the Earth system as documented, for example, by the burial of massive carbon-rich sediments (Oceanic Anoxic Events) during the early Cenozoic and Mesozoic.
Since 2014, Jens Herrle and Jörg Bollmann have been exchanging students and co-teaching graduate and undergraduate courses within the DAAD program strategic partnership between the University of Toronto and the Goethe-University Frankfurt. To further expand the teaching and research collaboration between colleagues at U of T Jens Herrle has been invited to the U of T as a Joubin James Visting Professor until the end of February 2016.