In January 2022, Dr. Ilya Bobrovskiy started research as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Section 3.2 - Organic Geochemistry. Dr. Bobrovskiy has received the Branco-Weiss Fellowship, awarded to young researchers who have conceived an original and independent research idea that falls outside the scope of the existing mainstream research directions. The fellowship provides up to five years of complete academic freedom to do interdisciplinary research at any institution in the world, and Dr. Bobrovskiy chose to come with it to GFZ-Potsdam.

In the next few years, Dr. Bobrovskiy will be aiming to resolve what were the environmental changes in ancient oceans that shaped the evolution of life from tiny single-celled bacteria to the large and immensely complex animals. He will combine analyses of fossils, molecular fossils and stable carbon isotopes in a series of new techniques that will allow the deconvolution of biomarkers and stable carbon isotope signals of ancient rocks. He will further develop methods for determining position-specific carbon isotope composition of lipids to apply it to the ancient record of fossilized lipids to recognize the physiology of first successful complex organisms.