Diedrich Vahrenkamp is a PhD student in the SSB group at KAUST, in the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering (BESE) Division, under the supervision of Prof. Kyle Lauersen.

Diedrich is from Germany. He studied Natural Resource Conservation at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where he was involved in field research in Canada and India. He then moved to the Netherlands for a master's degree in Aquaculture and Marine Resource Management at Wageningen University & Research. His thesis, carried out at Wageningen Marine Research, focused on how European flat oysters respond physiologically to simulated marine heatwaves. During his master's, he also interned at Hortimare, a seaweed breeding company, where he looked at why Saccharina latissima sporophyte yields decrease as cultivation volumes increase.

Before starting his PhD, Diedrich spent two years as an algae plant engineer at Beacon Development. There, he helped operate a 4-hectare microalgae production facility at KAUST with more than 3,000 m³ of culture capacity. His work ranged from maintaining starter cultures to running raceway ponds with volumes of more than 500,000 L in desert conditions. He also operated ceramic membrane microfiltration and ultrafiltration systems for harvesting and worked on downstream processes for producing pigments and plant biostimulants. As part of this work, he designed two circular production pilots: one used nutrients recovered from chicken manure to grow algae, while the other used CO₂ from black soldier fly larvae respiration as a carbon source for raceway cultures. He also trained in industrial microalgae production at the University of Almería