MEES IN THE NEWS

november 2025 - foundation spotlight: Earth & ocean

NEWS ARCHIVE

MEES RESEARCH CENTER

Oyster Restoration & Aquaculture: a nitrogen removal study on the bay

melanie jackson osborne (Ph.D. ‘19)

Melanie Jackson (Osborne) (‘19, Ph.D.) is currently serving as the Acting Deputy Director in NOAA's Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. As a liaison to Congress, Melanie oversees Congressional outreach for NOAA’s National Ocean Service programs and coastal resilience issues, including the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the Office for Coastal Management.  Under the advisement of Dr. Patricia Glibert, Melanie matriculated into the MEES Master’s program in Fall 2013 before switching to the doctoral program and earned her doctoral degree in MEES from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey Cornwell in Fall 2019. 

Prior to joining the MEES graduate program, Melanie notes her strong work ethic, community outreach and curiosity about the environment from her experience helping out on weekends as a cashier and in the office of her family’s garden center business;  a business that expanded to include a nursery.   Her passion for the environment persisted through high school, despite initial plans for a career in musical theatre, Melanie had the opportunity to merge these two passions through a school program called Ocean Kids, where Melanie instructed over 200 kids from underprivileged or low performing elementary schools on ocean stewardship, conservation through hands-on activities with curriculum that emphasizes the connection between local watersheds and the world's ocean.  This experience solidified her primary interest in the marine sciences, and led Melanie to participate in a five week research cruise with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography conducting 1-meter zooplankton net tows, egg production experiments, and other “hands-on” sampling work in the Costa Rica Dome area of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. 

Melanie noted these experiences highlighted the differences in the distribution of different zooplankton and how the fields including physical and biological processes in marine organisms are interconnected in oceanography. Melanie earned her Bachelor’s of Science degrees in both Marine Science and Biology at the University of Miami in 2012 with a minor in Chemistry all while holding a job. Under the advisement of Dr. Sharon Smith, Melanie’s senior thesis examined the distribution of Eucalandiae (copepoda), a small crustacean which plays an important and critical ecological role in energy transfer and in the export of organic matter and carbon sequestration in the deep ocean. Melanie also had many opportunities to conduct fieldwork including a hike through Braulio Carillo Parque National in Costa Rica through a tropical field biology course and during Melanie’s junior year, Melanie participated in a research diving class performing archeological field work while diving which highlighted the rewards of persistence and hard work. After graduation, Melanie had the opportunity to serve as an AmeriCorps watershed ambassador around some of New Jersey’s most polluted waters. Melanie noted later that the experience clarified the environmental issues that she wanted to delve into, and led her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Fall 2008.   Melanie matriculated into the MEES graduate program as a Master’s student under the advisement of Dr. Patricia Glibert, to study algae blooms and how they respond to different types of nitrogen pollution.   After earning her Master’s, Melanie further expanded this into her dissertation which included an analysis of how oysters could help remove nitrogen pollution at the Horn Point Laboratory.  

After graduation, Melanie was awarded the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship Grant serving as an Executive Fellow at NOAA’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs (2019). The following year, Melanie was appointed as a Congressional Affairs Specialist serving as the official liaison between NOAA and Congress and was responsible for communicating the Administration's views to Congress. Since January 2025, Melanie began serving in her current position as Acting Deputy Director in NOAA’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs.

For more information on Melanie, please click here. 

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Dr. Andrea pain

understanding terrestrial processes: a look at

the quality & quantity of coastal freshwater delivery

Andrea Pain is Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science based at Horn Point Laboratory and whose research links terrestrial and coastal processes by looking at the quantity and quality of water flowing from land to sea, including both stream runoff and groundwater.   A long time Earth & Ocean Foundation (E&O) MEES faculty member, Dr. Pain currently co-instructs MEES 627 (formerly MEES698K) - Biogeochemistry and has taught a MEES Foundational core course (MEES 640 - Interconnected Earth Systems: Land, Ocean and Estuary).  Streams and groundwater both contribute carbon and nutrients to the coast but vary in composition due to differences in how they flow through the landscape Dr. Pain is interested in how terrestrial processes impact the quantity and quality of freshwater delivery to the coast and the implications for ecological and biogeochemical processes in coastal regions, particularly in the face of climate change and rising sea levels.

Dr. Pain mentors MEES students in the classroom and in graduate research looking forward to developing new courses within the MEES program that may cover topics like hydrogeochemistry, coastal groundwater hydrology and sea level rise as well as topics in Arctic environmental systems science.  
The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences (UMCES) held a seminar from Horn Point Laboratory featuring Dr. Pain presenting the impacts of continental ice retreat on nutrient fluxes in Greenland; click here to view.   Dr. Pain earned her doctoral degree in Geology from the University of Florida in 2017, and her Master’s in Environmental Systems Science from ETH Zurich (2013), and a B.A. in Earth & Environmental Sciences from Wesleyan University (2008). For more information on Dr. Pain, click here.

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MEES RESEARCH CENTER

oxygen deficient zones (ODZ) on zooplankton and forage fish communities

david garcia (‘21, E&O)

David Garcia is a fourth year doctoral (Ph.D.) MEES graduate program candidate at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science focusing on studying the effects of low or zero oxygen (Oxygen Deficient Zones, or ODZ) on zooplankton and forage fish community in estuaries and the open ocean.  Zooplankton are food both for fish and for bacteria acting as a vital link in the food web. They also influence water quality and nutrient cycling through grazing on phytoplankton and by excreting waste, are essential for the ocean's biological carbon pump, transporting carbon to the deep ocean.   Advised by Dr. Clair Fuchsman,  using the North and South Tropical Pacific Zone, David’s doctoral research aims to statistically analyze the biodiversity in zooplankton and bacteria and see whether there are any differences above, within and below the ODZ. 

Prior to joining the MEES graduate program, David, who grew up in Seattle, Washington via his birth place in Aguscalientes, Mexico, always had a passion for understanding the nature of the ocean, which is one of the most unexplored frontiers.  This led him to the oceanography program at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, where David earned his Bachelor’s degree in oceanography in Spring 2019.  While at Washington, David joined the GenOM ALVA (Alliances for Learning and Vision for Underrepresented Americans) program, and paired him as a student assistant with Dr. Gabrielle Rocap, Professor of Oceanography at UW’s research lab.  David had the opportunity to work alongside Dr. Clara Fuchsman, who was a postdoc in the Rocap lab at the time, on cyanobacterial viruses (cyanophage) semi-quantifying genes in the environment, using metagenomics from the Eastern Tropical North Pacific (ETNP) ODZ.  Under the mentorship of Dr. Rocap, David did his senior thesis on enumerated marine viral particles from the Eastern Tropical North Pacific (ETNP) ODZ through epifluorescent microscopy and created a virus to microbe ratio.  This undergraduate work eventually led to a scientific publication in the journal Environmental Microbiology. David further expanded this research, participating in multiple research cruises in the ETNP oxygen deficient zone; one in 2018 and the other in 2019.   After graduating from UW, due to his dual citizenship, David had the opportunity to serve as a Mexican liaison assisting Dr. Fuchsman, following her completion of her post-doc, in taking size-fractionated chlorophyll samples from Mexican waters and Dr. Jacob Cram (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science) with particle filtering.   David took a position as a faculty research assistant with Dr. Clara Fuchsman who was now based at Horn Point Laboratory (UMCES) as an Assistant Professor.   David matriculated into the MEES doctoral graduate program in Fall 21.   David’s dissertation research encompasses ODZ various locations throughout the world including a second oxygen deficient zone in the South Pacific, the North Pacific, Atlantic and Polar Oceans.   David uses a combination of metagenomic and COI amplicon approaches to quantitatively study the effects of low or zero oxygen on zooplankton and forage fish community composition at their vertical migration depths in both estuaries and open ocean Oxygen Deficient Zones.  Zooplankton and forage fish migrate to depth during the day to avoid visual predators.  David, with a  strong background in microbiology, plans to statistically link zooplankton and bacteria at these depths. His dissertation is titled, “Distribution of zooplankton and forage fish across gradients in oxygen in estuaries and open ocean Oxygen Deficient Zones.”

Upon graduation, David hopes to continue operating in academia, and to increase understanding of the vast ocean.  For more information on David, please click here.

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