Dr. Eva Breyer is a postdoctoral fellow at Shanghai Ocean University, where she investigates the ecological and biogeochemical roles of pelagic fungi in the global ocean. She received her PhD in Biology at the University of Vienna in 2024, following an MSc in Ecology & Ecosystems and a BSc in Biology from the same institution. Despite her short academic career, she has 12 published articles with an H-index of 7 and 164 citations. Her research integrates microbial oceanography, molecular ecology, and biogeochemistry to understand how fungi contribute to organic matter cycling, biomass distribution, and ecosystem functioning in marine systems, by integrating field observations, laboratory experiments, and genomic approaches. She is currently one of the leading experts in marine pelagic fungal research, having pioneered quantitative assessments of fungal biomass in the global ocean and contributed to redefining the ecological role of fungi in marine ecosystems. Dr. Breyer has participated in multiple research cruises across the Atlantic and Southern Ocean and has published in several high-impact journals, including Cell, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Nature Communications, Microbiome, among others. She has presented her research at 27 international conferences, and received best presentation honors in South Korea and Malaysia. She has also chaired 4 sessions on marine pelagic fungi at the ASLO 2023 (USA), OSM 2026 (Scotland), XMAS 2025 (China) and EBUS 2022 (Peru) conferences. She was granted the China Postdoctoral science Foundation research funding, and received the Shanghai Super Postdoctoral Incentive Award.
