Fellowship Experiences

Based on a recent survey, my advisor, a colleague, and I have found that people who volunteer in environmental groups are unlike the average citizen.

Recently the Fish and Invertebrate Ecology Lab at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) finished the majority of its preparations for its two upcoming crab-tagging experiments this summer. These experiments will use mark-recapture to discover valuable information on sizes of populations, their migration patterns, and any interactions they may have with people who spot or recapture them.

You know the old adage “there are plenty of fish in the sea?”  Well, what if that wasn’t the case?  How would we even know this was becoming not the case before it was too late?

When people think bacteria, they often think disease. But in reality, pathogenic bacteria are a very small fraction of all bacteria. Bacteria are everywhere, and though small in size, these microscopic organisms are highly complex and play important roles in controlling global nutrient cycles.  Read more...

I had finally finished over a year’s worth of careful data analyses from my graduate research project on the Chesapeake Bay, and I was ready to share them with the rest of the world. Together with my advisor, Michael Kemp, I wrote a paper reporting my results and submitted it to a scientific journal. However, when the journal (actually!) accepted my paper and I should have been jumping for joy, I instead felt more angst.