A few weeks ago, I attended the ASLO Summer Meeting in Victoria, British Columbia with the Melack/MacIntyre lab family (that's us in the first photo!!). It was a whirlwind of talks, posters, and plenaries, and I presented my research examining lignin phenols as biomarkers of terrestrial organic matter in Santa Barbara Channel marine sediments. I had the opportunity to meet researchers from all around the globe as well as several current lab collaborators and fellow early career scientists. Now, I'm back in Santa Barbara and hard at work prepping for August field work and experiments. More on that soon!

Last week, Chloe Smith (REU 2017) attended the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon to present her independent research examining the effects of low pH seawater on sediment microbial processes. As a member of the Hampton Scholar cohort, she was mentored by Karen Casciotti and Jonathan Zehr and had the opportunity to spend the week learning about new research and meet other budding aquatic scientists. This was Chloe's first scientific conference, and she is looking forward to many more!

Chloe Smith, my NSF REU student from this past summer, has received the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography's Multi-cultural Program Fellowship to attend the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, OR. The fellowship establishes a cohort of young researchers who attend the meeting as a group, and it pairs them with a mentor for the duration of the meeting. In addition to attending various talks and panels, she will be presenting a poster on her research examining the effects of low pH on marine sediment biogeochemical processes. If you're headed to the meeting this spring, be sure to check out her poster as part of the  Biogeochemical Processes Across Oxic-Anoxic Transitions session. Great work, Chloe!!

For more information about the ASLO Multi-cultural Program, click here.