MEES IN THE NEWS
NEWS ARCHIVE
MODERN METHODS FOR SUSTAINABILITY in MARYLAND’s OYSTER COMMUNITY:
A JOINT MULTI-DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION
Photo Courtesy: UMCP/John T. Consoli
October 19, 2022 - This month’s Maryland Today magazine features an article on the University of Maryland’s joint project on gathering data for sustainability and growth in the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population. This unique multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional research team (three USM institutions and six U.S. universities & labs) represents a broad swath of disciplines (bioengineering, engineering, ecology, computer science, environmental science, aquaculture, fisheries & robotics), and features two members from our very own MEES community: MEES faculty member, Professor Matthew Gray (UMCES), the project’s co-leader, and his student Alan Williams (Ph.D., ECOL SYS). Led by overall Project Leader Professor Miao Yu (UMCP), these researchers aim to provide modern methods to augment oyster harvesting & cultivating traditions as well as develop technologies that have multiple applications in other parts of the seafood industry. We are proud of all of our brilliant learners and thinkers, who are not only passionate about research, teaching, and discovery, but also about truly enacting meaningful and impactful change both locally and globally. For more information, click here.
OCTOBER 2022 - NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY MONTH
Monthly Spotlight: National Biodiversity Month (October 2022) - Kohma Arai (Ph.D., ECOL SYS) advised by Dr. David Secor, is a third year Ph.D. MEES student at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences (UMCES). Kohma was recently awarded the prestigious 2022 Reid Evans Menzer Memorial Graduate Award. Kohma’s current research interest is investigating this question: “Does diversity in marine animal populations help stabilize their local environment?”. Kohma recently published a March 2021 Scientific Reports paper entitled: "Multi-decadal trends in contingent mixing of Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) in the Northwest Atlantic from otolith stable isotopes". For more on Kohma’s research, click here.
Faculty Focus: Dr. Margaret Palmer is a Distinguished University Professor, a Professor of Entomology (UMCP), and is currently serving as Director of the College of Computer, Mathematical & Natural Sciences’s National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SENSYC). With a background in hydrology and ecology, Dr. Palmer has worked extensively on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem processes and is an international expert on the restoration of streams and rivers. Dr. Palmer has also been a longtime MEES faculty member who has mentored and advised many MEES graduate students. Check out Dr. Palmer’s article in the August 2022 issue of Science: “If the Past Teaches, What does the Future Learn?: Transforming Urban Environments”. Dr. Palmer was also the keynote speaker at this years 2022 NSF’s Institute for Geospatial Understanding through Integrative Discovering Environment (IGUIDE) Webinar Meeting with a presentation entitled, “Looking Beyond Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure to Build Discovery Environments”. For more information on the Palmer lab, click here.
MEES Research Corner: Mingli Zhao (EMST, Ph.D.) is a recent graduate from the MEES Program earning her Ph.D. this past Summer 2022 from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Under her advisors, Dr. Eric Schott (IMET) & Dr. Harold Schreier (UMBC), Mingli has garnered numerous awards during her stay in the program including the Reid Evans Menzer Memorial Graduate Award (2021), and the Debbie Morrin-Nordlund Memorial Graduate Award (2020). Her dissertation researched focused on discovering and characterizing virus diversity in marine-ecosystems using the blue crab as a test species. Check out her proposal published in the March 2021 Journey of Invertebrate Pathology entitled “Diversity and classification or reoviruses in crustaceans: A proposal”. Mingli is currently a post-doctoral research fellow in Dr. Sarah Hill’s lab in the Department of Pathology and Population Science at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College.