Congratulations to the SEASPACE 2008 Scholarship Winners!

The 2008 SEASPACE Scholarship Committee is happy to announce the winners of the scholarship competition. Eleven college students were chosen to share in this year's scholarship fund. The Scholarship Committee is comprised of an all volunteer group and they are Jesse Cancelmo (chairman), Dwight Coles, Claudia Ludwig, Carolyn Peterson, Robyn Rhea, Jean Truax, Jim Ward, and Dick Zingula. The committee would like to thank all SEASPACE volunteers and participants who contribute to making this program a success.

Our 2008 scholarship recipients are:

Undergraduates

Gabrielle Folger is an undergraduate student at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. Her research interests are coral reef communities and the surrounding biodiversity. Her studies involve monitoring the health of the reefs and assessing conservation strategies. After graduate school, Gabrielle aspires to land a job with NOAA.

Li Ling Hamady has a 4.0 GPA at University of California at Santa Barbara where she majors in Marine Ecology. Her current interests are in marine biogeography. She plans to conduct research on population connectivity and larval dispersal using microchemistry techniques and molecular genetics. Li Ling also plans to study a species of fishing interest such as the humpback grouper in the Indo-West Pacific Coral Triangle.

Mahima Jaini attends the University of Maine where she majors in Marine Biology. She graduates in May 2008 and will attend graduate school at University of Maine in the Fall 2008. During her undergraduate freshman and junior years she worked with a graduate student at the Aquaculture research center. She also completed a summer internship and assisted in a variety of studies and activities including the genetic diversity of marine toxic algae, the rescue and rehabilitation of California’s marine mammals and a project on the green sea urchin fishery in Maine. Her research paper focuses on the sea urchin “boom-bust” fishery in Maine.

Alycia Rajendran is at the University of Miami pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in Marine Science and Chemistry. Her research interests include marine ecotoxology, marine natural products, and new drug discoveries and synthesis. Her focus for graduate school is to research the mechanism of chemical pollutant migration through the marine ecosysytem and its effects on humans.

Graduates

Mariah Boyle is pursuing a Master’s degree in Marine Science at California State University Monterey Bay. Her thesis involves determining the feeding habits of the frequently-caught roughtail skate. Understanding its diet will help management agencies recognize where this species fits in the food web, and in turn how removal of the species through fishing affects the web.

Laura Carney, a previous SEASPACE Scholarship recipient (2007), majors in Ecology at University of California at Davis. The goal of her research is to determine how giant kelp populations recover from the devastating impacts from El Ninos. This knowledge will allow for a better management of this valuable resource. Laura is an avid scuba diver and explores the Point Loma kelp forests on a weekly basis.

Sarah Corbis is another previous SEASPACE Scholarship recipient. She is pursuing a PhD in Biology at Portland State University. For her research on dolphins, Sarah is developing models that predict gene flow and dispersal patterns of island-associated dolphins in order to predict effects of human and natural activity on their populations. She has 172 spotted dolphin skin biopsies and 3500 photos collected in the Hawaiian Islands between April 2002 and August 2007.

Kari Heinonen is working on her PhD in Oceanography at the University of Connecticut. Her dissertation research focuses on the interactions between an abundant invasive crab species and the economically important crustacean-feeding guild of fishes in Long Island Sound. Understanding such interactions will help develop decision models for managing invasive crabs, thereby reducing risk to the ecosystem.

Christi Hughes is a Wildlife Science major at Texas A&M University at Galveston. She is characterizing sea turtle nesting on the upper Texas coast to provide data that can be used for conservation and management efforts needed for the critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle. Her research efforts on Galveston Island will continue through the 2009 nesting season.

Ami Krasner is pursuing a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University. Her primary career goal is in marine mammal rehabilitation medicine. Ami has completed three internships. At Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce she conducted dolphin research; at the Fisheries and Wildlife Management Assistance in Arlington she worked on endangered mammal populations; and at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, CA she researched the effects of fishing interactions on the local pinniped populations.

Jennifer O'Leary is an Ecology and Evolutionary Biology major at University of California at Santa Cruz. After four years of field work, Ami is in the final stages of her PhD. Her area of study is overfishing and its impacts to the marine communities. One aspect of her studies is how fishing indirectly alters the stability of coral reef systems through changes in the food web.

Scholarship page
Return to SEASPACE Homepage

Last updated on 9/6/2009, by