New faces on campus

We have a number of new faces on campus, although some may be leaving us shortly.

Alisia Holland is a first year doctoral grad student in Julia Diaz’s lab. She recently graduated from Florida State University with a B.S. in geology. Alisia is originally from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Mariele Paiva is a Brazilian Ph.D. student from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (FURG). She is working in Cliff Buck’s lab. Mariele has particular interests in natural chemical tracers of marine processes such as submarine groundwater discharge and marine geochemical cycling. She is sponsored by the Nippon Foundation and Partnership for Observation Oceanography. Mariele spent the first year of her research work at the Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany), working on the measurement of dissolved and particulate Thorium-228 and Radiuim-224 in coastal waters. She was recently granted a scholarship by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel for a one-year-visit study at Skidaway Institute. Here, she will work on sediment samples from the Southwestern Atlantic Shelf.

Sarah Zajovits has been interning in Aron Stubbins’ lab this summer. She is from Raleigh, N.C. and is a junior marine science major at the University of South Carolina. Sarah plans to go to graduate school when she graduates. Her work this summer has focused on dissolved inorganic and organic carbon. “Nothing makes me happier than the sun, sand and the sea; so it looks like I’ve found where I’m meant to be,” Sarah said.

Russell Nicholson, a senior biology major at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, has been interning in Liz Harvey’s lab this summer. He is studying the effects of marine bacterial metabolites on phytoplankton, specifically the toxicity of algicidal compounds, which kill or limit the growth of algae. For his experiments, he runs bioassays with the coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, and uses fluorescence probes to detect stress signals that identify the algicidal compounds’ mechanism of action. He also accompanied Liz on a research cruise off the coast of Bermuda aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer.

Sam Khallaghi is working in Clark Alexander’s lab this month. He is a Ph.D. student at Clark University. Sam is originally from Iran. He has two master’s degrees, one from Tabriz University in Iran on applications of GIS and remote sensing with focus on land and water resources, and a second one from Lund University in Sweden, specializing in geomatics. In 2014, he moved from Sweden to the United States and joined Hewlett-Packard in Sunnyvale, Calf., as a network security technical support engineer. He began his doctoral program at Clark University in 2016.

His current project has several objectives, “But the two main ones are to make a land cover map of Sapelo Island using five time points, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017, and then do a post classification change analysis to find the metrics of change in the study area,” he said. “Then the findings would come out in the form of a report and hopefully a journal article.”

The Gray’s Reef dive team welcomes Erika Sawicki, this year’s Dr. Lee H. Somers American Academy of Underwater Sciences Scientific Diving Internship scholarship winner. The scientific diving internship provides undergraduates with experience and exposure to research and field work at environmental organizations around the country.

Erika recently graduated from the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine with a double major in ocean studies and marine affairs, and environmental science with a minor in philosophy.

Erika recently received her AAUS certification at the Scripps Research Institute. She will use her new training for the month of August assisting GRNMS staff on dive missions. To read about her adventures, please visit her blog at http://blog.owuscholarship.org/.