The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) application season is here. I was fortunate enough to receive a fellowship for my application is 2017 after an unsuccessful one in 2016. From one rejected and one accepted, here is a list of resources that helped get me through it, a bit of my personal … Continue reading
The winter holiday season is quickly approaching, which if you’re lucky means some extra free time away from work or school. Here at UnderTheC, we have compiled a recommend reading list of some of our favorite science related books to keep you occupied and entertained! Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime by Ellen Prager (Justin) NPR article … Continue reading
Oceanographers generally love maps. They’ve made some pretty great ones like Marie Tharp’s who created the first map of the entire ocean floor: Recently, I wanted to make an oceanographic map for one of my projects. The World Ocean Atlas publishes data such as temperature, salinity, and nutrients for 1° grids all around the world. … Continue reading
This summer UnderTheC alum, Kelsey Ellis, and I joined the Cassar Lab from Duke University for a research cruise out of Bermuda. This was our cruise track which has striking resemblance to the Bermuda Triangle so naturally we were a little concerned about returning: The ship was the R/V Atlantic Explorer owned by the Bermuda … Continue reading
This week officially marks one whole year here at UNC working on my master’s degree so I decided to take some time to reflect on a few broad things I learned. Hopefully this post will provide you with some perspective on graduate school and advice if you are starting soon. 1. Word soup is better … Continue reading
Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology in collaboration with other Federal agencies and private companies announced a new National Microbiome Initiative (NMI) aiming to accelerate studies on microbiome research including the ocean microbiome. Their aims are summarized in three points: Support interdisciplinary research Develop platform tecnologies Expanding the microbiome workforce This essentially … Continue reading
For people doing ecological research, the trend of increasing demand for bioinformatic skills is obvious. I’ll never forget seeing the picture below for the first time when my current adviser gave a talk at N.C. State University and finished with this image to describe how future ocean microbiome research may be conducted. There will be … Continue reading
What if we threw away the airplane every time we flew from L.A. to New York? We would never fly. This analogy is one I repeatedly hear from people at SpaceX, a California-based company with the mission “to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.” The core of achieving this … Continue reading
The dungeness crab fishery in the US represents a $170 million market, but you may have seen in the headlines that this year’s crab pots will remain empty and fishing vessels are staying in their harbors. The root of the problem can be traced back to Pseudo-nitzschia, a common type of phytoplankton which produces a toxin … Continue reading
My current research has a lot to do with coastal upwelling so I’ve been looking into ways to show people how it works. For those that do not know, upwelling is a wind-driven phenomenon where cool nutrient-rich water rises to the ocean surface. When wind blows across the ocean in a particular direction, surface water … Continue reading
