Professor Patrick J. Schembri leads the Marine Ecology Research Group (MERG) at the Department of Biology. The group has two ongoing research programmes: Faunistics and Ecology of the Maltese Islands (FEMI) and Biodiversity, functional structure and conservation of the deeper water benthic assemblages of the Maltese Islands (TRANSDEEP).
Within these programmes, a number of specific research projects are undertaken, some of these as part of international research collaborations or through research grants awarded by international funding agencies.
These projects include the CAMP-MCA project and the FAUNA EUROPAEA-NAS Extension project.