The Current-Summer 2019

RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

SUMMER 2019

The Simulated Bay Film Study Semester Science Path of Discovery Research Reach

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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THE

CURR ENT Principal Investigator/Project Director Geoffrey Bothun University of Rhode Island Co-Principal Investigators Bethany Jenkins University of Rhode Island Jeffrey Morgan Brown University Neal Overstrom Rhode Island School of Design Lewis Rothstein University of Rhode Island

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Welcome to the summer 2019 issue of The Current, the flagship magazine of the Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR program. This year marks a monumental milestone for our NSF EPSCoR program—15 years of enhancing research capacity and workforce development across the state! The impact has been significant and could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedication of our faculty, students and staff, the leadership of our state Science and Technology Advisory Council, and the support from our partner institutions and stakeholders.

Diversity Action Committee Chair Charles A. Watson University of Rhode Island Science & Technology Liaison Christine Smith RI Commerce Corporation Administrative Team Sally J. Beauman Project Administrator

This issue of The Current embodies the mission of RI C-AIM, our current Track-1 project. Translating fundamental and applied research into new opportunities, engaging students in transdisciplinary research and training activities, fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion to broaden participation, and positioning RI as a global leader in predicting and responding to climate change—these principles guide RI C-AIM.

Barbara ‘BJ’ Carangia Scientific Research Grant Assistant Jim Lemire Undergraduate Coordinator

As you enjoy this issue of The Current, I encourage you to reflect on these principles and our collective responsibility to advance them.

Shaun Kirby Communications & Outreach Coordinator All editorial content produced by

Best wishes,

Shaun Kirby unless otherwise stated.

Design Studio Rainwater www.studiorainwater.com Copyright © 2019. All Rights Reserved.

On the Cover: Robert Chevalier, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, holds up his test device for nitrate detection.

Geoffrey D. Bothun, Principal Investigator & Project Director Professor of Chemical Engineering, Division of Research and Economic Development, University of Rhode Island

CONNECT WITH RI C-AIM WWW.URI.EDU/RINSFEPSCOR

The Current Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR Fascitelli Engineering Bldg, Room 418

RI

R H OD E ISL A N D CON SORT I U M F OR

Coastal Ecology Assessment Innovation & Modeling

University of Rhode Island 2 East Alumni Ave. Kingston, RI 02881 401.874.6880

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Rhode Island EPSCoR is funded by the National Science Foundation under the current Award #OIA-1655221.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

FEATURES 4

The Simulated Bay A new ocean modeling program will help researchers simulate the complex dynamics of Narragansett Bay’s ecosystems

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Mentor’s Journey Chuck Watson, Chair of the

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Consortium’s Diversity Action Committee, speaks to passion for helping students of underrepresented

When Diatoms Meet Detection Biologists, chemists and engineers are collaborating to develop better devices for marine sensing

groups realize their career path

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On Display Sights and numbers from the Consortium’s annual research symposium

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Semester Science

Film Study

URI undergraduate Erin Tully

Faculty and students at Bryant, Salve Regina and URI try to halt march of bacteria interfering with marine data collection

experiences into school year

takes summer research

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Research Reach See how far Consortium faculty and students have traveled to present studies in coastal science and engineering

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Cell Service Bryant undergrads tackle marine chemical detection with cell phone cameras

24 Path of Discovery Brown researchers create a new home for collecting and preserving ecological data through the Rhode Island Data Discovery Center

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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THRUST 1 + 3 | ASSESSMENT + INNOVATION

WHEN DIATOMS MEET DETECTION Marine biologists use myriad

A water sample from Narragansett Bay contains a multitude of living and inorganic matter. Detecting nitrogen and phosphorus, two of the most important nutrients for life in the ocean, requires sensors that can sift through these materials and accurately measure such chemicals in the parts per million, even parts per billion range.

“Developing a sensor that is selective to just nitrate and phosphate is really tough,” admits Robert Chevalier, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Rhode Island. “There are a lot of microorganisms and contaminants we have to worry about in seawater. Chemists can get readings in the parts per billion range, but those measurements are often being taken from samples of nitrates in pure water or ethanol.”

instrumentation to collect data from the world’s oceans, from hulking CTDs for temperature and salinity to remotely accessed devices taking water samples at depth. What if, however, that data

Riley Kirk, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, examines a water sample aboard the R/V Cap’n Bert alongside Jorge Vazquez, a 2019 Consortium Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF), and RI-INBRE SURF Marina Carro.

could be gathered with technologies no bigger than a human hand? Consortium investigators across marine disciplines are collaborating to make sensors that fit the needs of scientists at sea and in the lab.

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THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

Microfluidics n.

Chevalier belongs to ‘Team SERS,’ a moniker given by Consortium graduate students using a specific chemical engineering technique—SurfaceEnhanced Raman Spectroscopy— to detect nutrients in the ocean. Students and faculty have been testing devices with millimeter-sized metal surfaces that, when touched by seawater, can adsorb molecules of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Scientific field pertaining to the behavior of fluids through micro-channels of manufactured technologies

The devices are housed in a ‘microfluidic’ casing that directs the elements of a water sample at a sub-millimeter level either towards or away from the metal surface in order to isolate nitrogen or phosphorus molecules.

“These microfluidic channels direct solutions where we want, so ideally all of the detection can be done with this device and laser from a Raman spectrometer, many of which are handheld and easily brought on a boat,” says Chevalier.

When passed over said device, this laser ‘scatters’ light in a pattern distinct to the singular molecules present on the metal surface. Investigators can read this scattering to measure chemicals in a given water sample.

Creating devices that are portable and inexpensive, says Dr. Bethany Jenkins, URI professor of cell and molecular biology, is crucial for reducing the time between collecting a sample and producing clean, research-viable data.

Instrumentation typically deployed on research vessels require a significant outlay in funding and time devoted to preparation and maintenance.

“Big SUNA nitrate sensors are great, but I can’t stick them into my culture bottle,” she says. “You can take a bunch of these SERS and paper devices on a ship with you and quickly test water that you bring up. That capability is really handy.”

Portable devices created through the Consortium can also be coupled with one of the state’s most significant ecological resources: the Narragansett Bay Long-Term Plankton Time Series. Since 1957, weekly water samples collected off Fox Island have provided marine scientists the opportunity to research decade-scale changes in nutrient cycling

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

Microfluidic devices created by Robert Chevalier, a Consortium and University of Rhode Island graduate student, are prepared for testing.

and species dynamics. The time series is currently operated by Dr. Tatiana Rynearson, professor of oceanography at URI and a Consortium researcher.

Beyond improving ecological datasets and research infrastructure around Narragansett Bay, investigators in marine biology, chemistry and engineering are working to create dependable, cost-effective sensors with a view towards industry.

“One of the things that will make this whole project last beyond five years is to have that industry engagement,” says Katharine Hazard-Flynn, executive director of URI’s Business Engagement Center. “We’re in the early stages, but if we can get commercialization potential from some of these new sensors, or get industry involved in testing, I think the future will be much more sustainable.”

“The challenges of developing a sensor in your lab are very different to when people out in the world use it,” says Dr. Jason Dwyer, URI associate professor of chemistry. “We have to deliver something reliable.”

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THRUST 2 | MODELING

Carlyn Chrabaszcz, a 2019 SURF and undergraduate at Brown University, collects data from Narragansett Bay that will ultimately be used in the Consortium’s ocean modeling efforts. Photo by Jonathan Benoit.

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THE THECURRENT CURRENT || SUMMER 2019

The

Bay

Improved past, future simulations of Narragansett Bay will help researchers understand climate and environmental conditions

Narragansett Bay features a complex marine system of organisms, nutrients, chemicals and currents, all interdependent and potentially affected by even the slightest change of environment. For decades, ocean scientists and engineers have been making observations detailing the inner workings of these systems, but like an incomplete DNA sequence, gaps of knowledge remain.

The challenge for ocean modelers like Brown University’s Dr. Baylor Fox-Kemper, associate professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University, centers on developing sophisticated computer programs that provide scientific insights of coastal ecosystems changing due to climate variability.

The Consortium’s modeling team is building the Ocean State Ocean Model (OSOM), an ’endto-end‘ simulation of the Narragansett Bay ecosystem that will help researchers better define the ecological and physical dynamics at play in this complex marine system.

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

“We will simulate everything from the circulation of the Bay up to societal issues,” details Fox-Kemper.

“Data on salinity, temperature, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fisheries, and how humans interact with the bay will all be incorporated. It won’t be a single piece of software that does all that, but a series of modules that illustrate the bay environments.”

OSOM’s development is in its nascent stages as Consortium researchers from Brown and the University of Rhode Island figure out how to mesh data from many disciplines, the variables and time scales of which are not all uniform.

“There’s different ‘currency’, we might say,” FoxKemper explains. “In physics, for example, our currency is momentum and energy as we think about things like mass and kinetic movement throughout the water column. For marine biologists, however, the currency is usually nutrient levels and plankton count. For fisheries researchers, they are dealing with calories among species. We are learning how to put these pieces together.

“That’s why a large, collaborative network is important as no one group can assemble all the different pieces together. We need all the complementing disciplines so that when we make a model, we know their currencies and how to convert them.”

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The ability to hindcast, or simulate models of Narragansett Bay’s past environments, highlights an important feature of the OSOM that will allow researchers to test the accuracy of observational data from previous years.

“Scientists usually write papers about observations they have made in the past,” says Fox-Kemper.

“If last November, for example, was a productive month for phytoplankton growth in Narragansett Bay, then you may want to have a cotemporaneous model about things like water circulation to inform your paper. That is a hindcast setting we are hoping to offer.”

To test a mathematical model with data from a past event or environment

“When you predict the weather, people have a sense of how accurate that is,” says Fox-Kemper.

“Similarly, when you predict something about the bay, people should be able to assess whether it was accurate.”

Hindcasting furthermore will provide OSOM users the chance to conduct ‘reanalysis’ studies through which observational data are examined alongside a computer model, thus offering a clearer picture of the past dynamics in a given ecological system.

Fox-Kemper notes that Rhode Island is at an advantage because of the many environmental datasets collected on Narragansett Bay. Through OSOM’s hindcasting capabilities, he says, forecast models of future environmental change can be tested. The timescale for such forecasts will start small, however.

“In atmospheric reanalysis, we are creating more sophisticated computer models for storms even when observations stay stationary, which allows us to learn more about past events although we are not adding new data,” Fox-Kemper notes.

“The models help us to reduce guesswork as we trust in the physics of the ocean and fill out our understanding even with limited information.”

“Projecting decades into the future based on a system built to project weeks into the future seems crazy, but let’s run next week before we get there and see if we’re doing a good job,” says the Brown researcher. “If we can develop an accurate model of last week’s marine dynamics, we can gain greater confidence about predicting into the future, if only in small time increments at the start.”

As scientists improve the world’s knowledge and approach to climate variability, developing forecast models of Narragansett Bay environments poses a crucial but challenging prospect for the Consortium’s modeling team.

Once the OSOM is fully operational, the Consortium’s modeling team hopes that scientists can rely on its open-source modeling capabilities to make well-informed inferences about Narragansett Bay’s changing ecosystems, research from which will augment future decision-making from Rhode Island communities and their leaders.

“Not all ecological change is human-induced, but if we can predict correlation versus causation, then maybe we can have a better sense of what’s coming before it gets here.”

Fox-Kemper says: “This is a really sophisticated modeling system we’re building, so the question becomes: can we create a model in which it’s possible to switch human decisions on and off, and see the potential consequences? Not all ecological change is human-induced, but if we can predict correlation versus causation, then maybe we can have a better sense of what’s coming before it gets here.”

—DR. BAYLOR FOX-KEMPER, BROWN UNIVERSIT Y

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Hindcast v.

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

THRUST 3 | INNOVATION

Faculty and students from Bryant, Salve Regina and URI finding ways to halt microbial communities interfering with marine sensors

A microscopic image of a PDMS surface covered in biofilm. The reddened and dimmer areas show chlorophyll-producing bacteria, while the large, bright shapes are photosynthesizing dinoflagellates eating the bacteria. Image courtesy Dr. Vinka Craver and Dr. Susanne Menden-Deuer

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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What is biofilm?

Place any object in the ocean and within a few hours, a thin film of microorganisms begins to form on its surface. In days’ time, a complex, symbiotic community of marine life is flourishing.

This ‘biofilm’ world, however, often hinders research below the waves.

Consortium faculty and students from institutions across Rhode Island are learning more about the microbial makeup of these biofilm communities, with an ultimate eye towards lessening the impact on marine sensors and finding novel ways to remove biofilm from equipment without harming the environment.

“It’s been millions of years and these bacteria have found a way to adapt, so our task in checking their growth is difficult,” says Dr. Vinka Oyanedel-Craver, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Rhode Island.

Polysaccharide n. a carbohydrate produced by early colonizing bacteria that forms a sticky film on an underwater surface

How does a biofilm community form?

When an object like a sensor buoy is placed in the ocean, says Dr. Anne Reid, assistant professor of biology and biomedical sciences at Salve Regina University, ‘first colonizers’ latch onto the surface and begin to create chemical by-products that attract other organisms.

“Those first colonizers are usually much better at sticking to less hospitable surfaces,” she explains.

“The bacteria then produce polysaccharides (a carbohydrate made of multiple sugar molecules) that increase the stickiness of a surface, allowing other microbes to attach.”

A sample of cultured biofilm, held by 2019 SURF and University of Rhode Island undergraduate Devyn Barazza, is ready to be examined under the microscope.

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THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

Biofilm research: a three-pronged approach This biofilm research is being conducted through three separate projects. Craver and graduate student Kayla Kurtz have set up controlled tests at both Roger Williams University’s Marine Biology Wetlab and the University of Rhode Island’s Marine Science Research Facility. Kurtz has cultured biofilm communities on plates made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a clear, rubbery material being used by Consortium researchers to case marine sensors that will ultimately be deployed in Narragansett Bay. “Once the bacteria and biofilm start to show, I then examine it with nano-scale microscopes,” details Kurtz, who worked with Xiaojie Liu, a mechanical engineering graduate student at URI, to create a custom PDMS test plate. “The challenge is trying to identify the bacteria and biomolecules showing up on the PDMS.” Dr. Christopher Reid, associate professor of science and technology at Bryant University, is working alongside colleague Keyana Roohani to catalog bacteria extracted from samples of biofilm grown in Narragansett Bay. This database has been created through metagenomics, or the identification of species and their chemical characteristics through DNA sequencing.

“When we did our literature review, Chris and I found that there haven’t been any studies on biofilm in the northeast United States,” admits Roohani. “So, we said, ‘let’s figure it out’.”

Anne Reid’s work focuses on understanding the geographical distribution of biofilm bacteria in marine communities across Narragansett Bay. “How some bacteria develop biofilm in Wickford Cove, for example, could be very different than in another part of the Bay, so we are trying to isolate and characterize those individual species and test their interactions with different surfaces,”

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

“The hope is to prevent biofilm from forming on sensors for the longest time possible, but in the end, we will need to use multiple strategies of prevention and cleaning to deter the bacteria and other organisms from growing.”

—DR. VINK A OYANEDEL- CRAVER, URI

she explains. “From those tests, we produce simplified biofilms in the lab using microbes we know are present in Narragansett Bay, learning how to prevent biofilms from forming or disrupt them once they are formed.”

A view towards prevention Once Craver and her team have sufficiently captured the makeup and dynamics of Narragansett Bay’s biofilm communities, the research will focus on developing effective strategies to slow down bacteria and other organisms in ways that not only allow marine sensing equipment to do its job, but also reduce the use of potentially harmful anti-fouling techniques. These strategies will be tested on equipment from the Consortium’s Bay Observatory.

“Once we understand the diverse species within biofilm and where the Consortium will put its chemical sensors in the Bay, then we can incorporate our research into developing cleaning procedures,” says Craver. “The hope is to prevent biofilm from forming on sensors for the longest time possible, but in the end, we will need to use multiple strategies of prevention and cleaning to deter the bacteria and other organisms from growing.”

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CHEM SENSOR

Above: Biogeochemical sensor buoys launched in Narragansett Bay's East Passage as part of the Consortium's Bay Observatory will also stage real-life biofilm experiments.

HOW DOES

BACTERIA

STAGE 1 Seconds: Bacteria, or “first colonizers” attach to surface within the marine environment and begin to draw carbon and other nutrients from surface materials.

FORM? The successful operation of any object i n placed in a marine environment, from a boat motor to the Bay Observatory’s biogeochemical sensors buoys, can be hindered by the formation of so-called ‘biofilm,’ a slimy substance created by tiny bacteria attaching themselves to that object’s surface.

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STAGE 4 Days to weeks: Macro-organisms like plankton and invertebrates utilize biofilm as a nutrient source and attach. A complex, three-dimensional species community forms with the biofilm as a foundation.

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

BIOFILM

PDMS LAYER

STAGE 2

STAGE 3

Minutes: First colonizers secrete “exopolymers,” gel-like materials in order to protect themselves from outside environmental conditions.

As a result, an initial biofilm forms.

Hours: Other diverse microorganisms like algae and protists attach to the surface and form microcolonies. The biofilm expands and some first colonizers are released to re-colonize other nearby surfaces.

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

Graphic by José R. Menéndez

PLANKTON

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Chuck Watson, chair of the Consortium’s Diversity Action Committee, speaks at the Metcalf Institute’s Inclusive SciComm event in September 2018. Image by Kabita Gautam.

MENTOR’S JOURNEY As chair of the Consortium’s Diversity Action Committee, Charles Watson is utilizing his experiences to provide research opportunities for underrepresented students and minority groups

Waking up every morning, Charles ‘Chuck’ Watson, director of Diversity Initiatives at University of Rhode Island’s College of Engineering, knows he will receive an email or a phone call from a student concerned about their progress in a mechanical engineering course or asking about materials needed for a scholarship application. These are the face-to-face moments that Watson enjoys most.

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THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

Waking up every morning, Charles ‘Chuck’ Watson, director of Diversity Initiatives at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Engineering, knows he will receive an email or a phone call from a student concerned about their progress in a mechanical engineering course or asking about materials needed for a scholarship application. These are the face-to-face moments that Watson enjoys most.

“You are always advocating,” says Watson, who serves as chair of the Consortium’s Diversity Action Committee. “Many minority students are coming in underprepared academically, financially, socially, and facing different cultural issues. You have to know how to enlighten them to the work they will have to put in, but also let them know you will be there for them.”

The committee comprises of diversity and inclusion leaders at all of the Consortium’s partner institutions who engage underrepresented student scholars and underrepresented groups to participate in research and professional development programming. Through the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) and the Career Development Program, the Consortium is providing avenues for students to work on active marine science research and engineering projects, as well as learn how their career paths can unfold.

“You have to know how to enlighten students to the work they will have to put in, but also let them know you will be there for them.”

— CHARLES WATSON, UNIVERSIT Y OF RHODE ISL AND

Since joining URI’s College of Engineering in 2004, Watson also has served as senior coordinator for the National Science Foundation’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, developing a professional network of faculty and diversity and inclusion experts that can provide meaningful support for underrepresented students and underrepresented groups pursuing careers in STEM.

The key for Watson, however, is creating an environment through the Consortium in which students can make the most of such opportunities.

“Collaborating with other LSAMP partner institutions, mentors and NSF-funded programs that promote broader impacts for underrepresented students in STEM really helped my continued growth in understanding of how important issues of diversity and inclusion are locally and nationally,” says Watson. “Each institution has its own internal quandary when it comes to diversity and inclusion, but you have to leverage an opportunity like RI C-AIM, a $19 million grant, to help support their goals as well.”

“We need to make sure we let underrepresented scholars know what is available to them,” he says.

“RI C-AIM is a recruiting mechanism for our DAC members to provide research opportunities for these scholars who in the future may decide to pursue a graduate degree at their institution.

When the focus remains on academic and personal success for these students and underrepresented groups, emphasizes Watson, the Consortium can serve as an important building block for the next generation of STEM professionals.

“We can’t just have students in the summer and kick them to the curb. RI C-AIM and DAC is another platform to help these scholars promote themselves by sending them to workshops and conferences where they can give poster presentations and sit on panels to discuss their research.”

“In May, when you’re standing on that stage because a student has graduated and you’ve been in lockstep with them along the way, when you see families so proud of their accomplishment, that is motivation for me,” he says. “That is what RI C-AIM and the Diversity Action Committee can do.”

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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OVER

100 ATTENDEES from RI and beyond

ON DISPLAY 15 Years of RI NSF EPSCoR

175 INVESTIGATORS funded across nine institutions

At the 2019 RI NSF EPSCoR Research Symposium, Principal Investigator Dr. Geoffrey Bothun, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Rhode Island, highlighted more than a decade of research support and infrastructure for faculty, students and institutions across Rhode Island.

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THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

616 STUDENTS

directly supported as part of next-generation STEM workforce

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POSTER PRESENTATIONS highlighting Year 2 research

Keynote: Dr. Kim Waddell, director of the Virgin Islands EPSCoR, on lessons and policy opportunities in wake of devastation from 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria

$88 MILLION total EPSCoR funding brought into Rhode Island

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

Graduate student speaker: Teresa Mako, doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, on advances in seawater nutrient detection through Consortium support Postdoctoral speaker: Dr. Peter Stempel, provost’s fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design, on rethinking model-driven, realistic storm-surge graphics

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SEMESTER SCIENCE Over the past academic year, University of Rhode Island junior Erin Tully has thought about nothing but As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, the basic code of DNA sequencing. Arriving between classes at her computer in Dr. Bethany Jenkins’ lab, the New Britain, Conn. native has been developing a database of diatom communities from water samples collected in Narragansett Bay through PCR (polymerase chain reaction), a common technique for marine biologists to measure the types and abundance of plankton species in the ocean.

During the summer, Tully was fully trained in water sample collection and preparation, traveling between day-long cruises on Narragansett Bay and the research lab, where she learned the many steps needed to prepare water samples for DNA analysis.

“The sequencing program, R, merges the DNA codes so that if I see ATT, for example, I know that is a [diatom] Thalassosira,” explains Tully.

“Merging is the big step, as from there I can assign the taxonomy of a species based on the code.”

Through her research, Tully is comparing diatom communities at two current sampling sites, URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography and off Fox Island in North Kingstown, in order to better understand whether the abundance of these important species changes based on location, time of the year, or both. “As scientists studying microscopic organisms, we get to see below the surface, quite literally,” says the URI junior of her passion for studying marine life. “I get to see the complex relationships that water produces.”

Tully is one of Consortium’s “SURF+” undergraduates, providing her the opportunity to conduct ongoing marine research of ecological changes happening in Narragansett Bay. But why diatoms? They’re one of the most important plankton species in our world’s oceans, says Tully. “One in every fifth breath you take is oxygen produced by a diatom,” she emphasizes. “Theirs is a whole world no one knows exists.”

“I want to be able to communicate my passion for marine ecology to people and say, ‘this is important, let me talk to you about why you should care.”

—ERIN TULLY, UNIVERSIT Y OF RHODE ISL AND

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URI’s Erin Tully takes summer SURF experiences into school year

“After going out on the boat one or two times a week, I had to make sure every sample was labeled with the correct date and prepared for filtration,” Tully notes. “Then I cleaned up, the typical undergraduate thing to do.”

After presenting her work at the Consortium’s annual research symposium this past April, Tully took a sabbatical from URI after receiving a $19,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to study ocean acidification impacts on crab species indigenous to Puget Sound in Washington State. This fall, she is studying at Cal StateMonterrey Bay through the National Student Exchange Program.

“Working on a ship and in the lab all the time, I love it,” stresses Tully. “I want to be able to communicate my passion for marine ecology to people and say, ‘this is important, let me talk to you about why you should care.’”

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

SURF+ and University of Rhode Island undergraduate Erin Tully catalogs water samples from a recent research cruise, work which she has juggled while taking courses full-time.

Tully’s guide for preparing water samples from Narragansett Bay for microscopic and DNA analysis.

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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RESEARCH New England

Akram Abbasi

Roxanne Beinart (left) & Erin Frates Pioneer Valley Microbiology Symposium Amherst, MA | January 22, 2019 Protistan ecology of Narragansett Bay benthic habitats

2018 AIChE Annual Meeting Pittsburgh, PA | October 30, 2018 Gold on fractal nanoparticles as highly active surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates

Jason Dwyer University of Pennsylvania Condensed Matter Physics Symposium Philadelphia, PA | March 27, 2019 Delving into the nanoscale world with thin-film nanofluidic devices

Anne Innes-Gold & Maggie Heinichen Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Institute Spring Research Meeting at the University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI | May 21, 2019 Modeling the Narragansett Bay’s social-ecological fishery system

Colleen Suckling

Joanie Racicot

Werth Center for Coastal and Marine Studies 16th Annual Seminar Series Honorarium Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT | March 6, 2019

American Chemical Society National Meeting Orlando, FL | March 31, 2019

A slow growing perspective on multi-generational responses to future change

David Ullman

Rebecca Stevick

Mid-Atlantic Bight Physical Oceanography & Meteorology Workshop Woods Hole, MA | October 12, 2018

Annual Meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association Seattle, WA | March 19, 2019

Preliminary results of a coupled simulation of Narragansett Bay hydrodynamics and ecology

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Colorimetric Paper-Based Detection of Phosphate in Marine Environments

Bacterial Community Dynamics in an Oyster Hatchery in Response to Probiotic Treatment

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

REACH

This year, Consortium faculty and students showcased their 2018–19 research and findings across the world

Coleen Mouw

MAY 2019

Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (IMBeR) Open Science Conference Brest, France | June 17, 2019

RI C-AIM Masters & Doctoral Awardees

Linking morphological characteristics and phytoplankton functional traits from continuous imaging

Masters Larynn R. Cutshaw Marine Affairs Leah Feldman Marine Affairs

Teresa Mako 84th Annual Meeting of the Israel Chemical Society Tel Aviv, Israel | Feb. 13, 2019 Highly sensitive, colorimetric, paper-based devices for the detection of nitrate and nitrite

Rennie S. Meyers Marine Affairs Sonia M. Refulio-Coronado, Environmental & Natural Resource Economics Kayla R. Kurtz Civil & Environmental Engineering Brenno G. Ribeiro Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics Rolf Staud Chemical Engineering Noah Walcutt Oceanography

Stephanie Anderson ASLO 2019 Aquatic Sciences Meeting San Juan, Puerto Rico | March 1, 2019 Winners and losers in a changing tide: temperature-nutrient impact on phytoplankton community dynamics Thermal diversity in a coastal marine Synechococcus community selected under low- and high-temperatures

Alexa Sterling ASLO 2019 Aquatic Sciences Meeting San Juan, Puerto Rico | February 23, 2019 Investigating Pseudo-nitzschia species composition and toxin production in Narragansett Bay, RI

Doctoral Akram Abbasi Chemical Engineering Monique LaFrance Bartley Oceanography Daniel R. Jones Chemistry Tejashree Modak Biological & Environmental Sciences Christopher J. Paight Biological & Environmental Sciences Peter J. Stempel Marine Affairs

Images courtesy of URI Graduate School of Oceanography and Shaun Kirby/RI NSF EPSCoR.

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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THRUST 3 | INNOVATION

CELL SERVICE Bryant undergrads team up with URI chemists to develop marine sensors from cell phones

Last November, Bryant University professor of Science and Technology Dr. Christopher Reid was searching for a meaningful research experience to offer his undergraduate chemistry class. The idea? Have students develop a strategy to detect potentially harmful chemicals in ocean water with a cell phone camera.

“The smartphone is a ubiquitous item now and can be deployed by citizen scientists, so everyone can have a chemical detector,” explains Reid of his motivation to involve Bryant undergraduates in marine detection research.

Connecting with colleagues Dr. Gerald John, a lecturer at Bryant, and University of Rhode Island’s Dr. Mindy Levine and doctoral student Teresa Mako, the group formed a three-month science project through which students first learned how to create paper sensors that would change color when coming into contact with nitrates and nitrites. In the world’s oceans, these chemicals are produced by marine organisms which in turn serve as nutrients for other species.

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“Nitrates are a good food source for plants, but in high concentrations are extremely detrimental,” details Mako. “Fertilizers with these chemicals have become a large source of pollution and health issues not only among humans, but marine organisms as well.”

The students began the project with an unusual technique; painting eyeliner in small circles on filter paper. The eyeliner formed a barrier around a dry solution that changes into a magenta color when touched by a solution containing nitrite. Thus a rudimentary paper sensor is made.

Nitrate & Nitrite n.

Chemical compounds produced by marine bacteria which in high concentrations can be harmful to other species.

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

Teresa Mako, doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, demonstrates to Bryant University undergraduate Carolyn Kenney how a cell phone camera can be used to detect color.

Bryant’s Courtney Anderson paints eyeliner on filter paper, creating a barrier to contain the paper sensor’s color reaction to nitrite in a water sample.

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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A sample setup for phosphate detection developed by University of Rhode Island chemistry graduate student Joan Racicot and 2019 SURF Alexander Olivelli. The cell phone camera is placed atop a lightbox, or a container which regulates the light surrounding a water sample in order to gain accurate readings from a paper sensor.

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THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

Top left: University of Rhode Island’s Teresa Mako, a chemistry doctoral candidate, demonstrates to Bryant University students how to create a rudimentary paper sensor during Dr. Gerald John’s undergraduate lab this past February.

“Eyeliner creates a barrier that prevents water from leaking all over a paper sensor,” explains Mako, whose research involves the development of cheap, easy-to-use paper sensors. “I’ve used this technique in other undergraduate labs, and it’s very instructive for students to observe the paper change color.”

Throughout the spring semester, students tested different cell phone models, developing calibration curves, a common method in chemistry for determining the concentration of a substance in a sample. With the data collected and research conducted, Reid’s students ended the course as all scientific researchers do; with a presentation.

The Bryant undergraduates then needed to investigate how Android and iPhones could reliably measure and record nitrates and nitrites from a sample. The students made 3D printed ‘lightboxes,’ or casings into which cell phones could be placed to snap a photo of a paper sensor without outside light interference. They gathered the ‘green’ color values of the paper’s magenta dots in order to measure how much nitrate or nitrite was concentrated in a sample.

“Environmental events like red tide are caused by too many nutrients like nitrates, so this research is important,” says Abigail Enck, a junior at Bryant who worked with Reid as a Consortium Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF). “I like that I am more aware. Diving in and getting quantitative data, I really learned how something could go from being just a color to a number to a graph.”

“Dr. John asked for us to test two different phones,” explains Norianne Martinez, a Biology major at Bryant. “When we calculated the green values, if you know that one part per million of nitrogen equals a particular green value, then you know what value would be higher than 10.”

“Gathering accurate values was difficult because every phone is different,” adds Emily McNulty, a sophomore.

The Bryant-University of Rhode Island collaboration was not only beneficial to the undergraduates, but also an instructive trial for Consortium researchers as they work towards deploying citizen science detection tools in the coming years.

“It’s really important to have undergraduates with very minimal experience to help us develop something that works really well in the hands of any person,” asserts Mako. “We get to learn the strengths and weaknesses of our devices through this research.”

“It’s really important to have undergraduates with very minimal experience to help us develop something that works really well in the hands of any person. We get to learn the strengths and weaknesses of our devices through this research.” —TERESA MAKO, UNIVERSIT Y OF RHODE ISL AND

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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Path of Discovery Brown’s Jeff Morgan and Kia Huffman create an online home to collect Narragansett Bay data

For decades, scientists have collected data on the coastal environments of Narragansett Bay, measuring everything

Dr. Jeffrey Morgan, Consortium Co-Principal Investigator and professor of biomedical engineering at Brown University, explains how data from the Bay Observatory is accessible through the Rhode Island Data Discover Center.

from changes in temperature and salinity to the prevalence of important species at the bottom and top of the marine food chain. As data acquisition rapidly increases through easy-to-use and portable technologies, much of this information is scattered among many websites, making necessary comparison work difficult.

In light of this data increase, Brown University’s Dr. Jeff Morgan and Kia Huffman have developed the Rhode Island Data Discovery Center, a single, go-to web resource for environmental data of Narragansett Bay. “There is all this great data, but often it is difficult for researchers to work with because it’s in so many locations,” explains Huffman, formerly a cyberinfrastructure architect at Brown, about her passion for data. “My passion is to make data easily accessible.”

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Huffman and Morgan, a Consortium co-principal investigator and professor of engineering at Brown, have connected with oceanographers, marine biologists, mathematicians, and state environmental officials over the past two years in order to gain permission for gathering historical data of Narragansett Bay within this one resource.

“The center is a portal where we can aggregate the data collections from many researchers, and we can overlay these collections in terms of time and space,” explains Morgan.

Researchers can also generate and download graphs to visualize differing environmental data side-by-side and hopefully develop meaningful research questions and conclusions.

“We enable people to compare different data collections in one place,” adds Huffman. “Sometimes, data is not easily comparable, for example, due to the use of different instruments, but one can notice trends common to different datasets over time.”

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019

owner and includes access to original datasets and important metadata, such as equipment and sample location information.

“There is all this great data, but often it is difficult for researchers to work with because it’s in so many locations.”

— DR. JEFFREY MORGAN, CONSORTIUM CO -PRINCIPAL

INVESTIGATOR

Huffman has worked for the past two years with Consortium researchers as equipment from the Bay Observatory comes online, data from which will be housed in real-time on the Discovery Center website.

In 2017, when the $19 million grant establishing the Consortium to assess the effects of climate variability in Narragansett Bay was proposed, Morgan and his fellow co-principal investigators had a problem: where does one start to establish such a data resource?

“There is so much data on Narragansett Bay, but it’s not ours,’” says Morgan. “In addition to the data from our new instruments, we wanted to host this historical data as well, so we have worked closely with collaborators and have had to be very respectful of investigators’ time and effort. It is their livelihood.”

The Brown researchers first teamed up with Sue Kiernan and Heather Stoffel at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Water Resources to access data from the Narragansett Bay Fixed-Site Monitoring Network, an equipment array of over a dozen sensors testing water quality through Narragansett Bay.

But who specifically benefits from these environmental datasets housed in one web location?

The main audience for the Rhode Island Data Discovery Center is the academic research community, says Morgan, but much of the data will be accessible publicly.

“Any investigator can go to the site and query data from different buoys and begin to plot these data in novel ways,” he adds. “That’s the big value, and hopefully researchers will find new and interesting correlations as we layer more data collections into the site.”

In the coming months, Morgan and Consortium colleagues will continue to add other unique data collections like fish trawls and concentrations of neurotoxin produced by certain species of algae.

The Brown researcher hopes that users of multiple disciplines will access the site’s data and request more.

“Once investigators establish a relationship with us, they know we will take good care of their data by providing a site that increases the visibility and broadens the use of their data,” says Huffman about future collaborations.

Below: an electronic component of the communications systems housed in the Bay Observatory’s biogeochemical sensor buoys. Data will be transmitted from the buoys to the Rhode Island Data Discovery Center’s web portal through a cellular broadband connection.

Other sources of live and historical data hosted through the Discovery Center include URI’s Narragansett Bay Long-Term Plankton Time Series, currently operated by Consortium researcher and professor at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography Dr. Tatiana Rynearson, and NOAA’s monitoring network of shore-based stations. All of the data hosted on the website acknowledges the data

RI C-AIM | RHODE ISLAND NSF EPSCoR

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RI

Narragansett Bay, lined by 400 miles of bustling Coastal Ecology coastline, is the ecological lifeblood of Rhode Island.

Assessment From sustaining marine industries to protecting Innovation & crucial mammal and fish species, the bay’s waters Modeling help many stakeholders thrive.

RHO DE ISL A ND C ON SORT I U M F OR

Through RI C‑AIM, engineers, scientists, businesses, students and coastal communities are working together to position Rhode Island as a center of excellence for assessing, predicting and responding to the bay’s ever‑changing and diverse ecosystem.

The Current Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR Fascitelli Engineering Bldg, Rm 418 University of Rhode Island 2 East Alumni Ave. Kingston, RI 02881 401.874.6880

To view past issues and learn more, vist

www.uri.edu/rinsfepscor Where We’re Headed in 2020

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Winter 2019

Winter 2020

THE CURRENT | SUMMER 2019