Graduate Students

From February 20- 24 2012, over 4,000 people will attend the 2012 Ocean Sciences meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. This biennial event is an important venue for international scientific exchange across broad marine science disciplines, including physical, biological, chemical and geological oceanography, as well as multidisciplinary topics. Presentations will include emerging research on the global ocean and society, including science education, outreach and public policy.

The Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island celebrated the recent retirement of one of its longest serving and most distinguished professors last week with a day-long symposium in his honor.

The University of Rhode Island's R/V Endeavor has commenced its 500th research cruise, carrying a group of faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students south across the Gulf Stream and into the Sargasso Sea on a seven-day expedition. The students and scientists will conduct measurements of the current in the Gulf Stream, sample for air and water pollutants, and collect samples of phytoplankton in the Sargasso Sea. The cruise is part research, and part training for students, who will learn about data collection and conducting science at sea by hands-on participation. 

GSO graduate student Victoria Paris Sacks was awarded 1st place by the Montgomery-Watson-Harza Consulting Engineers/Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors for her Master's Thesis "Validation of Polyethylene Passive Samplers for the Detection of Emerging Contaminants" in the Master's Thesis category.  Her research, advised by Dr. Rainer Lohmann, focused on using a novel, low-tech method of measuring waterborne contaminants from personal care products, pharmaceutical, and industrial processes not previously known as pollutants (e.g. polybrominated diphenylethers, nonylphenols, and triclosan).  

Elizabeth Harvey has just returned from a seven-week fellowship to Korea to gain insight into how harmful algal blooms form, and the University of Rhode Island doctoral candidate is eager to apply what she learned to her studies of algal blooms in local waters.

The Yarmouth, Maine, native said that when some toxic algae species quickly multiply, they can have a detrimental effect on the marine environment and cripple the aquaculture industry.

URI GSO researchers John King, Robert Pockalny, Monique LaFrance, Fred Hegg and Cam Morrisette embarked on an eight day cruise on the Environmental Protection Agency's Ocean Survey Vessel Bold to conduct an assessment of the seabed in Rhode Island Sound.

“There is a growing interest in oceanography in South Korea,” said David Smith, associate dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography, “and we have a number of informal collaborations with scientists and universities there.”

GSO is celebrating 50 years of research, innovation and discovery in 2011. To commemorate its 50th anniversary, GSO will be holding a number of events open to the public on the weekend of June 25-26 at the URI Bay Campus in Narragansett.

Matt Horn, who will receive his Ph.D. in oceanography, moved to URI just three days after earning a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, and just three weeks later he went to sea for the first time to begin his research. He began by trying to learn how CO2 moves from the atmosphere into the ocean and back again.

In early April, R/V Endeavor brought a group of enthusiastic students and faculty, led by Chief Scientist Susanne Menden-Deuer, out to the Gulf of Maine to study plankton dynamics on Georges Bank - a historically highly productive fishing ground.