Frontiers Newsletter Fall 2020

N E W S F R O M T H E R O S E N S T I E L S C H O O L O F M A R I N E & AT M O S P H E R I C S C I E N C E FALL 2020

Welcome to an Exciting New Semester!

By Roni Avissar, Dean, Rosenstiel School For the past six months, we have been working to safeguard the health and well-being of our Rosenstiel School community while providing an engaging on-campus and virtual learning experience in keeping with the University’s guidelines. Now, it is my great pleasure to welcome our students, faculty and staff to an exciting new semester of learning and research using an exciting hybrid educational approach.

classes this fall, and to our staff members who are providing an unprecedented level of support for our classroom and laboratory sessions.

We have also focused on enhancing our diversity and inclusion initiatives, both on and off campus.

As President Frenk has stated, we all have a responsibility to be a force for healing the deep wounds in our society.

at 305-421- 4373 or visit giving.rsmas.miami.edu if you are interested to know more about this opportunity.

Our total enrollment this fall has increased significantly to 417 undergraduates and 381 graduate students in our master’s and doctoral programs. In the first week, about 50 percent of the students were able to attend classes in person, and we expect that percentage to rise during the semester. My thanks to our faculty who are teaching in-person

Two years ago, we intensified our focus on recruiting a more diverse student body, and this fall we welcomed the most diverse class in our school’s history: more than double the number of Black students and significantly higher enrollment of other underrepresented groups, compared with last year. To ensure student success, we have created the Rosenstiel Opportunity Fund.

Please reach out to Jennifer Dillon

Our school continues to be a national leader in atmospheric, marine and earth research, and our faculty are making major contributions to scientific knowledge. We have highlighted some of their recent studies in this issue, along with their notable awards. Looking ahead, our faculty, students and staff will continue to address vital issues facing our planet. Thank you for your continued support!

R ESEARCH

NOAA Selects Rosenstiel School to Host National Institute The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has selected the Rosenstiel School to host the Cooperative

Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS). The selection comes with an award of up to $310 million over the course of five years, with the potential for renewal for another five years based on successful performance.

“CIMAS brings together the resources of the University of Miami with those of NOAA to foster excellence in research

and education targeted at understanding the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere and marine ecosystems,” said Ben Kirtman, director of CIMAS and professor of atmospheric sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School.

“This collaboration enables unprecedented innovation in NOAA’s mission of science, service and stewardship.”

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/noaa-um

Aquaculture Program can help feed the world Advances in aquaculture are crucial to feeding the world in the future, as conventional methods of farming simply can’t meet rising global demand.

Aquaculture can also provide an alternative to commercial fishing, helping to preserve threatened and endangered species around the world. Today, the Rosenstiel School is internationally recognized as a leader in the research and development of cost-efficient, ecologically friendly aquaculture practices.

Under the leadership of Daniel Benetti, professor and director of aquaculture, and John Stieglitz,

research assistant professor, the school is developing twoway commercial partnerships to help translate the school’s research findings and technology development into sustainable strategies for increasing production

“Open-ocean aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico and throughout U. S. waters has great potential.”

of seafood. “Open-ocean aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico and throughout U.S. waters has great potential,” said Benetti. “We focus on commercially important species, such as red snapper, Nassau grouper and hogfish.”

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/aquaculture-program

Excessive rain triggered 2018 Kīlauea volcano eruption, study finds Excessive and sustained rainfall triggered the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii, according to Rosenstiel School scientists James Farquharson and Falk Amelung. “We knew that changes in the water content in the Earth’s subsurface can trigger earthquakes and landslides. Now

we know that it can also trigger volcanic eruptions,” said Amelung, professor of geophysics and coauthor of a recent study in the journal Nature, “Under pressure from magma, wet rock breaks easier than dry rock. It is as simple as that.”

Using a combination of groundbased and satellite measurements of rainfall, Farquharson and Amelung modeled the fluid pressure within the volcano’s edifice over time—a factor that can directly influence the tendency for mechanical failure in the subsurface, ultimately driving volcanic activity. While small steam explosions and volcanic earthquakes have been linked to rainfall infiltration at other volcanoes in the past, this is the first time that this mechanism has been invoked to explain deeper magmatic processes.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/kilauea

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Researchers explore using corals to enhance coastal resilience

For two years, research associate Jane Carrick has been exploring how to limit the damaging effects a massive storm surge during a hurricane or more subtle “wave attacks” that cause erosion. She’s part of the University’s Coastal

Resilience Project, which aims to find a sustainable solution to protect coastal communities.

Carrick works at the Benthic Ecology Lab led by Diego Lirman, associate professor in the Department of Marine Biology and Ecology who specializes in coral reef restoration.

The team began by testing just how strong coral reefs were in an effort to determine whether reefs could protect a coastline, and found that reefs do in fact weaken waves.

“When you have a very complex 3D structure created by living corals, the energy of the waves gets mitigated,” Lirman said.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/coastal-erosion

New study could improve rainfall predictions during El Niño Researchers at the Rosenstiel School have uncovered a new connection between tropical weather events and U.S. rainfall during El Niño years. The results can help explain why California received significantly less rainfall than predicted during the 2015 El Niño event, while massive flooding occurred in the Mississippi River basin.

Graduate student Marybeth Arcodia analyzed 39 years of weather data to understand how the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), an atmospheric variability in the tropical Indo-Pacific Oceans, leads to pressure and rainfall anomalies over the North Pacific and North America. The study showed that the MJO could considerably alter an El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and could potentially advance understanding of Earth’s weather and climate system.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/predict-rainfall

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One UM student’s bridge to being a published scientist Becky Zlaktin entered the Bridge to the Baccalaureate as a Miami Dade College student hoping to conduct a research project. In 2017, she became an intern in the lab of Professor Martin Grosell, where she met Rachael Heuer, a postdoctoral researcher studying the behavioral effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms. With Heuer’s backing, Zlaktin planned and conducted an experiment using the California sea hare, known as Aplysia, to test the effects of high levels of CO2 in seawater in its nervous system.

The results of the experiment, published in the journal, Royal Society Open Science, revealed that those animal’s exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide exhibited changes in certain behaviors like tail-withdrawal reflex. The

Bridge program between UM and Miami Dade College was developed to encourage students from underrepresented groups to pursue graduate degrees and enter

Canon U.S.A. collaborates with Rescue a Reef In 2019, Canon U.S.A. teamed up with the Rosenstiel School’s Rescue a Reef program for a Canon Coral Restoration Collaboration. This initiative combines active reef restoration, student development, and multimedia communication to raise awareness and support for coral conservation. A key part of this project was building an undergraduate the Canon Coral Fellowship position to spearhead the initiatives.

Earlier this year, UM student Juliana Grilo was selected for the fellowship and joined Rescue a Reef on an offshore expedition to capture and contribute to the restoration of Canon coral reef plot. She has since worked to build visual resources to communicate the coral reef restoration efforts and amplify the program’s online presence through social media campaigns.

The fellowship has helped further advance Rescue a Reef’s mission and bolster the University’s coral conservation efforts.

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research careers in the biomedical sciences.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/published-scientist

In Memoriam: Nancy A. Voss Nancy Voss, former director of the Marine Invertebrate Museum at the Rosenstiel School and research professor emeritus, passed away on June 10 at the age of 90. She made major contributions in the field of cephalopod taxonomy, helped preserve the tangible research legacy of the Rosenstiel School for future generations, and was internationally active in promoting cephalopod research.

squid family Histioteuthidae provided proof-of-concept for her subsequent National Science Foundation-funded research program on cranchiids in the 1970s and 1980s. She was on the school’s research faculty for 50 years, from 1957 until 2007. She was also a founding member of the influential Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC), which she chaired from 1985 to 1988.

In 1950, as an undergraduate, Voss signed up for a summer course in marine biology and met an undergraduate teaching fellow named Gilbert Voss. The two were married in 1952, and collaborated on several research projects in the years that followed.

Her 1969 monograph on the

If you would like to donate in memory of Nancy Voss, please contact Jennifer Dillon at jsdillon@ miami.edu, 305-421-4373.

See video: https://rebrand.ly/video-nancy

D EVELOP M ENT Raising funds for Rescue a Reef For his eighth-grade graduation, Charlie Winkeljohn needed to design a community service project.

Although he was too young to volunteer at a Rosenstiel lab, he talked with Dalton Hesley, senior research associate, and chose to support Rescue a Reef, a citizen scientist project. “After touring

the lab and learning the multiple steps of the coral growth process, I decided to help them build awareness and raise funds,” Charlie said. He started a Facebook group, “Support Rescue a Reef,” created a video and raised more than $2,500 through his Cane Funder platform.

Now, he is planning to continue

his support for Rescue a Reef, and continue raising funds for his high school graduation.

Link to video: https://rebrand.ly/vanessa-castro-video

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Supporting Student Scholars A generous gift from the Valentine Foundation provided tuition assistance to 14 students in the Masters of Professional Science [MPS] program, helping them capitalize on the Rosenstiel School’s many academic and research opportunities. The Valentine Foundation also supported the activities of 19 undergraduate students who were selected to participate in the spring study-abroad semester in the Galapagos. Although the students had to return to the U.S. a little earlier than expected due to the COVID-19 outbreak, they were able to participate in almost all of their planned activities and complete the semester successfully.

Shark Research and Conservation In 2019, the Rosenstiel School’s Shark Research and Conservation Program (SRC) broke several records, including: • 250 days of field research • 1,600 citizen scientists who contributed 10,000+ hours of volunteer services • 575 sharks of 19 species sampled • 13 research papers published • 600+ million people worldwide who saw news and social media about SRC “Thanks to generous private support and grants, we were able to expand our outreach and education to citizen scientists and school children like never before,” said Neil Hammerschlag, director. “We are a catalyst that inspires students to achieve excellence in STEM, while enhancing their appreciation for sharks and marine conservation.”

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/shark-annual

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Student scholarships make dreams come true Scholarships make a big difference in the lives of Rosenstiel School students, pursuing careers in the sciences. Here are two of their inspiring stories: James Wilson, marine science and biology major

Anastasiya Plotnikova, marine biology and ecology major

Video: https://rebrand.ly/video-james

Video: https://rebrand.ly/video-anastasiya

Since fourth grade, James Wilson has been passionate about studying marine life. Thanks to a UM scholarship, he is making that dream come true.

“My parents told me that I couldn’t go to college unless everything was covered,” he said.

“Fortunately, I was able to receive a scholarship that allowed me to be immersed in academics. It changed life for me and my family.”

Born in the Ukraine, Anastasiya Plotnikova came to the U.S. at age five and discovered a love of biology in high school. “Coming here was the best decision I have made, and it wouldn’t have been possible without a scholarship,” she said.

“I’ve been able to do field research in the Solomon Islands, as well as here, and I am now planning to pursue a Ph.D.”

Professor Eberli Named the Robert Nathan Ginsburg Endowed Chair in Marine Geosciences Renowned educator and researcher, Professor Gregor Eberli, Ph.D., has been named the Robert Nathan Ginsburg Endowed Chair in Marine Geosciences. Since joining the Rosenstiel School’s faculty in 1991, Eberli has conducted extensive worldwide research on sea level, seismic stratigraphy, and using the carbonate sedimentary record to unravel the Earth’s changing climate. He was a postdoctoral trainee with Ginsburg, who founded the school’s Comparative

Sedimentology Laboratory (CSL) in 1970 and passed away in 2017. “Endowments like the generous legacy from the late Professor Ginsburg and his family provide vital support for our mission of education, research and service, in keeping with UM President Julio Frenk’s roadmap to the future,” said Dean Roni Avissar.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/ginsburg

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AWARDS AND AC C O L A D E S Remarkable grant achievements awarded to Rosenstiel faculty, in addition to those featured in this newsletter.

Recent grants awarded to Rosenstiel faculty • Assistant Professor Cassandra Gaston received a $0.7M prestigious CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This is considered one of the most prestigious awards for an untenured professor.

• Professor William Johns received a $2.3M research grant from the NSF to study variations in deep water

production in the North Atlantic. The ultimate goal of this project is to improve atmosphere-ocean models used for climate prediction.

• Professor Brian Soden received a $0.6M research grant from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) to investigate the linkages between ocean salinity, the hydrological cycle, and climate sensitivity, and a $0.8M research grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to examine how clouds, radiation, and atmospheric circulation influence the extreme weather events and impact climate in models simulations.

• Professor Hans Graber received a $3.6M grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to analyze large volumes of satellite image data using machine learning techniques, with the objective of improving environmental prediction models.

• Assistant Professor Nikki Traylor Knowles obtained more than $1M in two different research grants, one from

NSF to study how the cellular immune systems of corals respond to heat stress, and the other from the “Revive and Restore” Foundation to restore coral reefs based on stem cell treatment.

• Professor Paquita Zuidema received a $0.5M research grant from the DOE to improve our understanding of the low cloud response to the presence of radiation-absorbing aerosol over the southeast Atlantic.

UM professor receives prize for climate change research Rosenstiel School Associate Professor Katharine Mach received the Piers Sellers Prize for her solution-focused climate research at a virtual event in June. The award is bestowed annually in the name of Piers Sellers, the former astronaut and climate scientist, by the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds in the UK. The prize recognizes Mach as a rising star of the interdisciplinary climate research field and her unwavering commitment to climate solutions. Her work focuses on

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developing new ways to bring researchers and stakeholders together to understand complex climate risks for human security.

She also explores how to address challenges central to responses— whether equity and justice or the need for attention to long-term consequences of present-day choices. Her research assesses climate-change risks and response options to address increased flooding, extreme heat, wildfire and other hazards.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/risk-assessment

Students awarded prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowships First-year doctoral students Quinton Lawton and Jimmy Yun Ge have each been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship.

Lawton and Ge received two of only four Fellowships awarded nationwide in Physical and Dynamical Meteorology. Both are pursuing a Ph.D. at the Rosenstiel School’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/NSF-Graduate

Other Student Awards Nathan Taminger, a junior majoring in meteorology, marine science, and math, received The Stamps Scholarship, UM’s most prestigious merit award. To date, the national Stamps Scholars Program has funded multi-year scholarships for more than 1,800 students at 44 colleges and universities.

Three juniors– Luke Arends, meteorology and marine science; Amanda Culp, meteorology, mathematics, and geography; and Zachary Michael, meteorology and math – were awarded the NOAA Hollings Scholarship. They will start internships at the federal agency in summer 2021.

Oaklin Keefe, a senior studying meteorology and marine science, has been awarded the American Meteorological Society Naval Weather Service Association Scholarship.

Manish Devana, a doctoral student in the Department of Ocean Sciences, received the American Geophysical Union Outstanding Student Presentation Award for his talk. “Observing the Ocean,” at the AGU’s December 2019 annual meeting.

Five graduate students have received Mathematical and Physical Sciences Career Development Awards from the National Science Foundation: David Ehrens, tropical marine ecosystem management; Elizabeth Figueroa, marine conservation; Ryan Fochs, underwater archaeology; Kela McEntee, marine conservation; and Hiroaki Morikawa, natural hazards and catastrophes.

Three students in the Department of Marine Biology and Ecology have received awards. Khadija Haider, was invited to participate in the

Oaklin Keefe UM Graduate Teaching Academy; Melissa Drown received scholarship support from the AQUA foundation; and Brad Weiler was honored with a postgraduate scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Scientists awarded $6.74 million federal grant to study coastal land-air-sea-interactions A Rosenstiel School team of scientists will lead an in-depth collaborative study of coastal landair-sea interactions, which may affect wind fields, storm surges and wave action. “Although waves and winds behave differently in coastal areas than in the open ocean, there has been little research on those complex interactions to date,” said Brian K. Haus, professor and chair, Department of Ocean Sciences, and director of the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. SUSTAIN Laboratory. He is the lead investigator for the five-year project, “CLASI: The Coastal LandAir-Sea Interaction Experiment,” funded by a $6.74 million grant from the Office of Naval Research.

Read more: https://rebrand.ly/land-air-sea

A LUMNI NEW S Erica Rule accepts position at NOAA Fisheries Erica Rule (1999, MA, Marine Affairs and Policy) has accepted a position at NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center as chief of staff for science planning and operations. Previously, she was communications director at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). Rule began her federal career at NOAA’s AOML in Miami in 1999, growing an outreach and education position into a broad communications portfolio serving the most scientifically diverse laboratory in NOAA

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Research. Rule will help coordinate and implement a strategic planning process, priority-based resourcing, standardized policies and protocols, and communications with NOAA headquarters.

Congratulations, Erica!

U PCOMIN G EV ENTS October Thursday, October 1, 2020 Giving day is back for another year!

Join us on October 1, and together let’s celebrate #OneDayOneU – a 24-hour marathon of support to enrich and strengthen our community. Join the #UMGivingDay movement: https://givingday.miami.edu/

Tuesday, October 6, 2020 - 5:30pm-6:30pm Special Presentation: Sea Secrets Sustainable Marine Aquaculture and The Future of Seafood Production Registration: https://rebrand.ly/zoom_sea2020

The Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities better understand the ever-changing environment we live in. Private philanthropy ensures that our renowned faculty, researchers and the best and brightest students have access to state-of-the-art facilities, laboratories and research vessels to conduct vital marine and atmospheric research. Research that supports sound policy making in an effort to solve society’s most pressing environmental issues, all while educating the next generation of scientists.

We focus on local and global challenges such as weather and climate, sea level rise, hurricanes, marine conservation, sustainable fisheries, oceans and human health, natural hazards and catastrophes and more. If you would like to make a gift please call Jennifer Dillon at 305-421-4373 or go to our secure giving pages online at giving.rsmas.miami.edu

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