Philipp was a PhD student at the Centre for Ocean Life and worked together with Mark Payne and Thomas Kiørboe on large-scale distributions of phytoplankton and copepods. Among other things he focused on assessing the skill of future predictions of distributional changes of plankton species, establishing a copepod trait data base, and producing copepod trait biogeographies. The examiners concluded that he “delivered a highly professional, clear and logical lecture” and “successfully answered the committee’s questions”.