Smithsonian Fellows Dive into the New Year
Smithsonian Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGeo) Fellows dive into their research as the new year kicks off. The MarineGeo December 2017 Newsletter gave an overview of what current and former postdoctoral fellows are working on and where they are headed in the coming year. Here is a little bit of information about the work that these postdoctoral fellows are doing from the Newsletter.
New Postdoctoral Fellows:
Dr. Holly Sweat joined us in September as the newest MarineGEO Postdoctoral Fellow. Holly recently earned her Ph.D. from Florida Institute of Technology. While at the Smithsonian Marine Station for her fellowship, she is comparing how fouling microbiomes impact larval recruitment across latitudes. Holly is advised by Valerie Paul, Mark Torchin, and Whitman Miller.
Dr. Matt Whalen joined us in July 2017 as the MarineGEO-Hakai Fellow, based at the University of British Columbia and supported by our partner in BC, the Hakai Institute. Matt is a marine ecologist with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and is interested in how environmental heterogeneity influences the causes and consequences of biodiversity. Matt leapt directly into the fray after defending his dissertation in summer 2017 and co-led the 2017 MarineGEO/Hakai bio-blitz at Calvert island, BC.
Current and former Postdoctoral Fellows:
Dr. Simon Brandl, MarineGEO Postdoc Fellow (2015-2017), recently completed his fellowship and has moved on to a competitive Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at Simon Fraser University in Canada, where he will continue coral reef research in French Polynesia, among other places.
Dr. Brian Cheng, MarineGEO Postdoc Fellow (2014-2016), has completed his tenure with the Smithsonian and moved on to a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where we trust he will be a partner in MarineGEO’s expansion into New England.
Dr. Maggie Johnson, current MarineGEO Postdoc Fellow (2016 - 2019), joined us from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2016. Under the advisement of Andrew Altieri and Valerie Paul, Maggie is using the TMON sites to understand how ocean acidification affects biodiversity and function in calcifying ecosystems.
Dr. Erica Staaterman, MarineGEO Postdoc Fellow (2015-2017) concluded her fellowship early to take a Bioacoustician position at the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in Feburary 2017. While with us, she studied the relationships between bioacoustics, biodiversity, and anthropogenic noise.