With Honors

The end of the academic year is a crazy time with tests, essays, pomp and circumstance. We are saying goodbye to three of our undergraduate researchers.  Two of which were my first undergraduate researchers - Angela Coccagna and Christian DiLiberto. They both accomplished a lot - generating research results that will be included in future publications - Angela contribute to a manuscript on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and Christian contributed to a manuscript on the role of Wnt signaling in urchin plasticity.

Christian made a huge commitment by doing a Seniors Honors Thesis. This means different things in different universities, schools within Rutgers, and departments. Christian did his in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (MBB) - a tough department that also ranks the honors - No Honors, Honors, High Honors, and Highest Honors. Highest Honors is usually reserved for students who have done 3-4 years of laboratory research and generated a paper... and yes, many of the Seniors Honors students in MBB did 3-4 years of undergraduate research in a single lab.  Despite this, and the potential handicap of doing research in a Marine and Coastal Science Lab (aka the Adams LaRVAE Lab), Christian was awarded second place for best Senior Honors Thesis!  WELL DONE, Christian! 

We're very proud of all of our students. With three leaving and another taking a semester off, we are sad... we'll have to try to find more great people at Rutgers to join the lab.  Congrats, Seniors!  Best of Luck.

Welcome Colette!

Although the time will be short, we're very excited to have recently minted Dr. Colette Feehan join the lab this summer as a postdoc. Dr. Feehan is an expert in disease as a driver of marine community dynamics. Her PhD thesis focused on sea urchin disease in Nova Scotian kelp forests. She is a prolific scientist with more than 10 publications before she even got her PhD!

This summer, she'll be leading a new project in the Florida Keys investigating the barriers that are preventing the recovery of Diadema. Diadema is a sea urchin that was wiped out by disease the 1980s (when I was 3!) and again in the early 1990s. The demise of sea urchins has been blamed for an increase of algae on reefs that are out-competing and killing corals. Managers and vacationers, who want to see beautiful coral instead of algae, are very interested in facilitating the recovery of Diadema. Hopefully, the results of our research can help both the public and government understand how to do this successfully.

Women in Oceanography

As I prepared to submit my first proposal, I received an edit back asking to remove the statement in broader impacts that the proposal would support a beginning, mixed race, female faculty member.  'No one cares about gender anymore.'  The comment implies that females are equally represented now -- all the programs and efforts to retain women have worked. The job is done.

The December issue of Oceanography revisits the status of women in the field of oceanography ten years after their first special issue on Women in Oceanography.  http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/27-4_supplement.html

The analyses presented there show that there is definitely progress. Numbers of females in all ranks of the faculty went up ~5%.  However, overall, women still comprise only 23% of the faculty in oceanography.  My department is right on the average with 7 females in a faculty of 30 - 4 of which are pre-tenure. This means that I spend my committee meetings often surrounded by elder, caucasian males.

The good news is that things are changing... but we're not there yet.  Some of it will just take time to reverse the inequalities at the highest level, but some of it will be concerted efforts to keep women in the academy and successful. The Oceanography special edition contains over 200 autobiographical sketches of women in oceanography - included as role models, points of inspiration and connection, others who have or are going through similar experiences.  I wrote one... its in there, along side many of my friends and women I've never met.  Maybe it will contribute to helping someone to keep on this path or, better yet, truly find their own path here in the academy or elsewhere. 

Kick'em Jenny LIVE

As the cost of research at sea rises and the push to include more students and citizens continues, telepresence is becoming more common.  What is telepresence? Its like watching an unedited and interactive IMAX movie on your computer screen.  Live feed from the remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) streams from the sea floor through a satellite dish to your screen.  Scientists, students, and even citizens associated with the cruise can log in and help guide and describe the work being done. The rest of us can watch how it all unfolds -- the first glimpse of the vent as well as the ship steaming to the site, the ROV deployment and the drive to find the vent.

Shrimp @ Kick'em Jenny (c) Ocean Exploration Trust

Sound interesting?  Well check out the livestream as my good friend Dr. Anna Michel (and colleagues) helps execute undergraduate projects at Kick'em Jenny, a submarine volcano in the Caribbean from now until Oct 8th.

http://nautiluslive.org/

Official?

The semester is in full swing now with the first round of exams starting.  I am lucky to have a light teaching load and no full time class this semester.  Instead I'm helping out with a couple of other courses as a guest lecturer.  I gave my first lecture at Rutgers yesterday. The students were very interactive, had new ideas and insightful questions.  A promising start.  Does this mean I'm officially a Rutgers professor?

Time flies

Its amazing how fast a summer can fly.

A summer gone and what is to show for it? Three poster presentations full of excellent science.

Floating styrofoam balls

Tiny pinkish bundles of sperm and egg aggregate on the surface of the ocean in cycles with the moon. Fish start a feeding frenzy. Marine biologists start a different frenzy - they don their headlights, lie on their bellies to look over the dock, or hop into a kayak with a scoop. 

I temporarily traded in my sea urchins to try my hand at manipulating corals. Its a lot harder to work with corals that only spawn when they want to and where they want to. So this adventure took me to Hawaii in this summer.

Injected embryo (FITC, green) next to uninjected embryos. The symbiotic algae are autofluorescent (red)

The corals were definitely a challenge. But miracles happened, and we developed techniques to inject them and even got some to settle.  Yeah.  

Next year will be even better.

Faces of the lab

The lab is now humming with a group of students and a 'borrowed' tech constantly in and out - checking out their larvae, snapping pictures on the microscope, and grooving to music playing on the '80s boombox we inherited from who knows who! Its great to see the empty shelves and benches filled with boxes, instruments, and PEOPLE.

Adam Christman, PIV technician, learning how to culture sea urchin larvae.

Angela Coccagna, undergraduate researcher, taking pictures of her experiments

Christian Diliberto, undergraduate researcher, getting ready to spawn the variegated sea urchin, Lytechinus variegatus

Ryan Buttone, work study and undergraduate researcher, watching cells divide.

Ocean Sciences

I admit I feel a bit guilty being in Hawaii while my students and family are still battling with old man winter in New Jersey.... and it seems like old man winter is winning.

About half of IMCS building (probably more) hopped on the 11 hour non-stop flight from Newark to Honolulu to meet, greet, eat, and present at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting. A gathering of over 5,000 ocean scientists to share their research and ideas.

There are a lot of white men with beards in Hawaiian shirts!! But, I'm also pleased to see increasing diversity and gender balance.

The ASLO Minority Program (http://aslo.org/mas/) has brought some of the best and brightest minority students to Ocean Sciences and ASLO meetings for decades. The program seems to be thriving at Ocean Sciences this year. It could be the desire to go to Hawaii was appealing, but I'd like to believe that there are more students than ever interested in and pursuing ocean science careers. Over a decade ago, I was one of those undergraduates attending a scientific meeting for the first time. Now I'm on the other side... trying to recruit some of them to join my lab. Isn't life grand!

Aloha from Hawaii!

New Faces

There are new faces in the lab for the Spring Semester. We welcome two new undergraduates, Angela Coccagna (Class of 2015, Marine Science & Sociology) and Christian Diliberto (Class of 2015, Biological Sciences and Marine Science)! Angela will be working on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. Christian will be diving into the world of transcriptomics to identify genes that are involved in the phenotypic plasticity mechanism. Adam Christman is also joining us as a technician for the semester throwing our larvae into turbulence. Full introductions and pictures to come.

We also have new urchins in the lab to play with from the tropics to the frigid north.

Lytechinus variegatus variegatus, the variegated urchin (Florida Keys, Fla)

Lytechinus pictus, the painted urchin (Goleta, Cali)

Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, the green urchin (Cape Cod, Mass)