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Donald E. Canfield

Chair of Science
Biologisk Institut

Email: dec@biology.sdu.dk
Webside: www.sdu.dk/ansat/dec

M.Phil. and PhD Donald E. Canfield is Professor of ecology at the Department of Biology and Head of Research Unit at the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution (NordCEE) at SDU.

Furthermore, Professor Donald E. Canfield is the former director of NordCEE, a centre funded for 10 years by the Danish National Research Foundation.

He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. He is a fellow of the Geochemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Society for Microbiology, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Professor Donald E. Canfield has won the Vladimir Vernadsky Award from the European Union of Geophysicists (EAG) and the Urey Prize from the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG), where he is also a member of the board. He was also awarded the title of Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog in 2021.

Professor Donald E. Canfield has been awarded a Docteur Honoris Causa from the University of Poitiers, and he is a member of the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In addition to PNAS, he is on the editorial boards of Geobiology and the American Journal of Science. 

Finally, Professor Donald E. Canfield has been on an ERC panel for Advanced Grants in geological sciences, where he also received funding from 2011-2016. In 2017 he was one of only 11 top researchers who got the grant and the title VILLUM Investigator, a program that is characterized by grants for scientists rather than for specific research projects.

Broadly speaking, Professor Donald E. Canfield uses the study of modern microbes and microbial ecosystems to understand the evolution of Earth’s surface chemistry and biology through time.

For more information about Professor Donald E. Canfield, please refer to the SDU Research Portal