The History of the IGB

Stable isotope research has a long history at the University of Bayreuth (UBT). In 1987 the first analyses of stable isotopes were performed, shaping a foundation for stable isotope research in ecology and biogeochemistry.

Since 2006, the then-founded central service facility for Isotope Biogeochemistry (IBG - see here for former lab members, setup, publications (before 2022), and finalized projects,ongoing projects can be found here) has provided stable isotope abundance analyses for all working groups of the Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER). The BayCEER which was founded in 2004, is a research center of the University of Bayreuth including roughly 30 working groups in the biosciences and geosciences. It supports interdisciplinary research through central facilities and services and improves knowledge transfer within the focus area of Ecology & Environmental Sciences.

Independently of the IBG, additional sophisticated isotope analytics had been established and expanded within several groups from the Geosciences, Biology, and Chemistry Faculty, and in the newly founded Faculty of Life Sciences.This has broadened and enhanced the analytical capabilities at the UBT, including continuous and in-situ CO₂ isotope measurements, analytics for ultra-high ¹³C-labeling, and laser-based technologies for micro-scale isotope visualization. Consequently, this resulted in an even higher degree of specialization and expertise accumulation at the UBT. Also, the capabilities at the IBG have been expanded in 2019 with the purchase of new major instrumentation partly financed by the DFG (Großgeräteantrag).

With the support of the soon-to-be-retired Prof. Dr. Gebauer, who has been heading the IBG since it's founding, a consortia of in stable isotope research involved Professors from the UBT ("the steering committee") under the leadership of Prof. Johanna Pausch aquirded a highly competitive funding for a so called Core Facility from the German Funding Agency (DFG) in 2021. In 2022, Dr. Alexander Frank was appointed as it's lab manager, taking over Prof. Gebauer's legacy.