Having no publications to my name and only nebulous drafts of several (hopefully) publishable papers, I am not an expert on how to get published. This is why I attended a student workshop on this very topic at the 2018 ASLO summer meeting in Victoria, BC. In this workshop a panel of editors in chief … Continue reading
Category Archives: Science
Life with Kids: A Grad Student Perspective
Martín Benavides is a PhD student in Marine Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill. His research focuses on the variability of coastal shark communities in both time and space. He is also interested in the movement ecology of sharks in estuarine systems. Martín is a proud father of two boys and provides a unique prospective to … Continue reading
The future is now…?
Satellites hovering hundreds of miles above earth; underwater autonomous vehicles traveling through the ocean; drones collecting snot above whales; and robots that move like fish; what do all of these things have in common (other than sounding like some futuristic world where robots and computers have completely taken over)?? Turns out, all of these things … Continue reading
7 things to consider before accepting a Graduate School offer
Applications have been submitted. Recruitment weekends are near (or have already come and gone). Funding source notification dates are coming up. And most exciting of all–graduate school acceptances are around the corner. It is an exciting time to see your hard work pay off. But wait. Hold your horses. Here are some things you should … Continue reading
From ocean acidification to freshwater alkalinization
By this point, most of our readers are probably pretty well versed in ocean acidification (just type ‘coral reef’ in the UNdertheC search box and you’ll come up with lots of interesting tidbits about ocean acidification). We know that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (from human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels) is … Continue reading
Uh oh, Vibrio: Not your grandma’s bloomers
This guest post is by Rachel Canty. Rachel is a Master’s student at UNC Institute of Marine Sciences. Her research focuses on coastal microbial ecology, specifically on competing different strains of the human pathogenic bacterium, Vibrio vulnificus, against one another. Rachel’s claim to fame is that she once swam on a relay with Katie Ledecky (5-time … Continue reading
Top down and bottom up controls (on wastewater treatment plants)
Top down and bottom up: two ideas often discussed in biology. Specifically, the idea that an organisms population is controlled by both bottom up controls (things like the amount of food around, temperature, freshwater availability) and top down controls (i.e., predation). But today, I’ll be thinking about ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ in a widely … Continue reading
What is a postdoc and how do I get one?
Wikipedia defines a Postdoctoral Researcher (postdoc for short) “a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies… The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pursue additional research, training, or teaching in order to have better skills to pursue a career in academia, research, or other fields.” I feel like … Continue reading
Bon appétit (with algae)!
It’s funny, sometimes, the random facts you remember from when you were growing up. One I vividly remember is my 9th grade biology teacher telling us that lecithin, a common additive in food and cosmetics, was originally derived from algae. Who knows why this fact stuck with me (maybe because she challenged us to find … Continue reading
Resources and Tips for the NSF GRFP
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