DMS Ph.D. Candidates Kayla Mladinich-Poole and Lauren Barrett have been selected as finalists in the 2024 cohort of the NOAA John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. Kayla will join the executive branch and Lauren will join the legislative branch. https://seagrant.noaa.gov/2024-knauss-finalists-announcement/
Our PhD student Anagha Payyambally was featured in UConn Today to celebrate her achievement of receiving the Quad Fellowship. Anagha is one of only 100 recipients out of over 3000 applicants to receive this fellowship to her graduate studies. This new fellowship program supports exceptional students who are citizens of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan to support their graduate studies in the United States and build collaboration among scientists and technologists.
Read the story here with quotes from Anagha and her advisor Dr. Manning. Congratulations, Anagha!
On 24 August, 2023, 10 community science organizations, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT-DEEP) and the University of Connecticut collaborated to simultaneously sample total alkalinity in the embayments and rivers bordering Long Island Sound (LIS). Led by DMS PhD Candidate Lauren Barrett, the event was a regional repeat of the 2019 effort led across New England by the Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN, http://necan.org/ShellDay).
The participating groups sampled for total alkalinity (TA) and hydrographic variables such as salinity and temperature during low, mid-, and high tides, meaning the spatial variation in alkalinity across the Sound. Seawater alkalinity requires high precision, expensive instrumentation and a skilled analyst, and thus typical observations of TA in LIS conducted by a single or a few researchers require that spatially separate samples also have a temporal difference. However, TA varies across diel and tidal cycles, so the spatial and temporal difference is important to parse. The collaborative effort of Shell Day allowed for a spatial identification of TA trends in LIS without the confounding temporal variation.
Shell Day 2023 was a successful event. Despite some mild rain in the afternoon, community scientists weathered the storm and still provided high-quality samples, which are currently undergoing TA analysis at UConn. The results of this work will be interpreted in the context of open LIS data (available through the Vlahos lab at UConn) and the data collected during Shell Day 2019. This work will be presented to the LIS Science Technical and Advisory Committee (STAC) this fall as well as to the participating organizations at a meeting which is to be determined.
Ann Bucklin, Professor Emeritus of Marine Sciences, has been appointed U.S. Academic Delegate to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES https://www.ices.dk). This appointment, made by the Department of State on August 17, 2023, authorizes Prof. Bucklin to serve as one of the two U.S. representatives on the ICES Council, which is the decision and policy-making body in ICES. The U.S. Academic Delegate is focused on encouraging and coordinating ICES-related research and activities in the academic community.
What is ICES and its mission?
ICES is a leading multidisciplinary scientific forum for exchanging information and ideas on all aspects of marine sciences, including environmental, scientific, fisheries, wildlife, and conservation affairs, pertaining to the North Atlantic Ocean, including the Baltic Sea and North Sea. Principal functions of ICES, since it was established in 1902 and continuing to the present time, are to: 1) promote, encourage, develop, and coordinate marine research; 2) publish and otherwise disseminate results of research; and 3) provide non-biased, non-political scientific advice. The ICES mission and goals are guided by a Strategic Plan, which identifies and addresses critical themes in science, collaboration, advice, data, communication, and service support. See: https://www.ices.dk/about-ICES/how-we-work/Pages/Our-strategy.aspx
How is ICES organized?
The principal decision- and policy-making body of ICES is the Council, which consists of a president and two delegates from each of 20 member nations across Europe and North America. One of the U.S. delegates is a federal employee and the other represents the academic community. The mission of ICES is accomplished by various committees and working groups. The Advisory Committee (ACOM) provides advice on fisheries and marine ecosystem issues. The Science Committee (SCICOM) oversees all aspects of the scientific work. Steering Groups coordinate more than 100 expert groups covering most aspects of the marine ecosystem that work under them. The scientific work of ICES is done by a community of more than 1,600 marine scientists from research institutes and universities in member and affiliate nations collaborating in expert working and study groups.
What’s the focus of your research and its relevance to your appointment as U.S. Academic Delegate?
My research focus is molecular analysis of biogeography and biodiversity of marine zooplankton, including population genetics of important species (especially copepods and euphausiids), local-to-global patterns of species diversity, and analysis of pelagic food webs based on DNA barcoding and metabarcoding. An important focus is time-series analysis of marine zooplankton species biodiversity, with applications for ecosystem monitoring and fisheries management on the NW Atlantic continental shelf. I have been a member of the ICES Working Group of Zooplankton Ecology (WGZE) and Working Group on Integrative Morphological and Molecular Taxonomy (WGIMT) since 2007; I served as Chair of WGIMT during 2014-2017. I am a grateful recipient of an ICES Service Award (2018) and an ICES Outstanding Achievement Award (2019). See: https://marinesciences.uconn.edu/person/ann-bucklin/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Bucklin
What are your thoughts about being appointed the U.S. Academic Delegate?
I have participated in ICES activities for many years. The ICES Annual Science Conference (ASC) is a valuable forum for the exchange of research results and exploration of important applications for ecosystem assessment and fisheries management. I am honored to have been appointed as the U.S. Academic Delegate and look forward to contributing to the ICES organization. A primary goal is to encourage broader participation from the U.S. academic community, including active researchers, Early Career Scientists, and students.
Congratulations to Mengyang Zhou on receiving the best poster award at the recent Gordon Research Conference on Coastal Ocean Dynamics (link:https://www.grc.org/coastal-ocean-dynamics-conference/2023/) in June of 2023. His poster entitled “Constraints on the bottom water residence time in an economically-important embayment of the Southern Benguela Upwelling System” is work that is part of an NSF-funded project led by Pf. Julie Granger (link: https://granger.lab.uconn.edu/) and Pf. Samantha Siedlecki (link: https://samanthasiedlecki.wixsite.com/coastalbiogeodynlab/about-us) in partnership with colleagues at the University of Capetown. Mengyang ran a series of particle tracking experiments in a high-resolution simulation to quantify the residence time of bottom waters plagued with hypoxia. Interannually, years with short bottom water residence time experienced little hypoxia. This work is part of his Ph.D. dissertation research with Pf. Julie Granger.
Congratulations to Professor Samantha Siedlecki who was recently awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor from the University of Connecticut! We are so proud to have Prof. Siedlecki as a member of our department and to see her awarded tenure.
Professor Siedlecki has been a highly valued member of our department since her arrival at UConn in 2017 and has played many leadership roles in our department and the broader scientific community. Dr. Siedlecki’s research group focuses on coastal biogeochemistry using a combination of simulations and observations to characterize historical and ongoing change and forecast future trends. A particular focus of her group’s work is on coastal carbon and oxygen cycling, including the impacts of decreasing ocean pH (ocean acidification) and decreasing oxygen (deoxygenation) resulting from climate change and other human impacts.
Her research accomplishments have been recognized through an Early Career Faculty Innovators Program Fellowship from NCAR and a Kavli Fellowship from the US National Academy of Sciences. Since her arrival at UConn, she has received approximately 16 grants totalling over $4 million in funding from organizations including NOAA and NSF, including serving as co-lead PI on a $1 million grant on assessing the vulnerability of sea scallops to ongoing ocean change.
Her teaching contributions have included developing two new courses, Ocean Expedition (a very popular course for our graduate students) and Biogeochemical Modeling, and teaching Environmental Reaction and Transport, a course that allows undergraduate students to develop their quantitative and problem solving skills. She has mentored numerous personnel in the department, and currently supervises two PhD students, one masters student, one research associate, one research scientist, and multiple undergraduate students.
Dr. Siedlecki has been highly active in departmental service, having served on several departmental committees, including the Advisory Committee to the Head, and was a founding member of the department’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee. She was recognized with a Climate, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award from the UConn College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2022 due to her contributions to fostering an inclusive climate in our department and at UConn.
Outside of UConn, she has had substantial contributions to research organizations and activities at the regional, national and international level, including serving as co-coordinator for the Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (NECAN) and serving as a member of the international scientific committee for the 5th International Symposium on Oceans in a High CO2 World, and also gave an invited plenary presentation at this conference. Dr. Siedlecki makes stakeholder engagement and outreach critical components of her research program and has participated in numerous outreach activities with members of the aquaculture industry and management organizations along with members of her research group.
Dr. Siedlecki has co-authored approximately 36 publications and some of her recent publications are listed below.
Now that she has been awarded tenure, Prof. Siedlecki looks forward to finalizing her group’s work with east coast coastal communities through a regional vulnerability assessment of scallops and the communities who rely on them. She plans to conduct similar assessments in other regions with the international research community and is currently preparing a proposal with South African colleagues.
Congratulations to Dr. Siedlecki! We are excited to watch the future accomplishments by you and your team!
Recent publications:
“Seasonality and life history complexity determine vulnerability of Dungeness crab to multiple climate stressors” by Berger et al. (2021) in AGU Advances. This paper was led by Siedlecki lab graduate student Halle Berger.
“Coastal processes modify projections of some climate-driven stressors in the California Current System” by Siedlecki et al. (2021) in Biogeosciences.
“Projecting ocean acidification impacts for the Gulf of Maine to 2050: New tools and expectations” by Siedlecki et al. (2021) in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.
Prof. Siedlecki at the Avery Point campus
Prof. Siedlecki and PhD student Halle Berger in Norway following a research conference.
Prof. Siedlecki on the R/V Connecticut during the Oceanographic Expedition graduate course in 2022
