At Sea and Around the World

A team of 17 University of Rhode Island faculty and students depart this week for a month-long expedition to the waters off Antarctica to study the feeding behavior of krill, a key organism in the food chain in the Southern Ocean.

An article in the current issue of BioScience, co-authored by Tatiana Rynearson, associate professor of oceanography at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, calls for the establishment of a national network to monitor the diversity of marine life, a bellwether of ocean and human health.

Kerry Whittaker, a doctoral student at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, has been recognized with an award for her research at a recent scientific conference.

Maryjo Brounce, a doctoral student at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, has been recognized with awards for the best student presentation and the outstanding student research paper in the field of tectonophysics at the recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest gathering of earth and space scientists in the world.

Scott Nixon was posthumously awarded the 2013 Citation for Scientific Excellence at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) 2013 Aquatic Sciences Meeting in New Orleans. His daughter, Beth Nixon, accepted the award on his behalf.

The full citation is available at this link.

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) announced that Dr. David L. Evans, former Director of the Center for Sustainability: Earth, Energy, and Climate at Noblis, Inc., will serve as the association’s new Executive Director.

“We are thrilled to have Dr. Evans as a part of the NSTA team,” said NSTA President Dr. Karen L. Ostlund. “He is a prominent scientist and a distinguished and visionary leader who will guide the association’s future course and continue to establish NSTA as a leader in STEM education.”

University of Rhode Island oceanographer Brice Loose is nearing completion of a two-month experiment inside a laboratory where the temperature is a frosty -20 degrees Fahrenheit to reproduce the surface of the frozen Arctic Ocean and learn what factors influence the exchange of gases between the water and atmosphere.

From December 3-7 2012, over 20,000 people will attend the 45th annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California. This event is an important venue for international scientific exchange among Earth and space scientists and educators.  

A significant contingent of URI GSO faculty, staff and students will be presenting their research to an international audience.

Dr. Mary-Jane James-Pirri, a marine research associate at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, has been named the winner of the 2012 Award for Natural Resource Research by the northeast region of the National Park Service.

GSO alumna and former Dean of GSO Dr. Margaret Leinen has been elected to President of the Board of Directors of the American Geophysical Union.  Her two-year term will begin on 1 January 2013.

Dr. Leinen, who received her PhD in Oceanography from GSO in 1980 and served as Dean of GSO from 1991-2000, is currently the Associate Provost and Executive Director, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Florida Atlantic University, Fort Pierce. Her research interests are paleoceanography, paleoclimatology, biogeochemical cycles, and climate change.