Seminars

About the speaker:

Heather Liwanag is an Associate Professor of Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is interested in the physiological adaptations of animals to their environment, and the evolutionary processes involved in those adaptations. Much of her research has focused on thermoregulation (the regulation of body temperature) and energetics (metabolic rates) in vertebrate animals, including seals, sea lions, and even lizards. She has been fortunate to work with an amazing group of people (Team B-030) on this recent project, studying the early development of Weddell seal pups in Antarctica.

About the speaker:

Dr. Jonathan Warrick is a Research Geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, California, where he studies the movement of sediment in rivers and in the sea.  Jon has led efforts to characterize the outcomes of the world’s largest dam removal project on the Elwha River, and his work has been featured in multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Outside Magazine, and the nationally broadcast CBS Evening News.  Jon received a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the UCSB in 2002 and has authored or co-authored over 90 peer reviewed science articles, reports and book chapters and has contributed to or presented over 150 scientific presentations and guest lectures.

About the speaker:

After growing up on a sheep farm in upstate NY, Sean received undergraduate degrees from SUNY Cobleskill and Cornell and his PhD from UC Santa Cruz, where he studied marine mammal physiology and behavior. After years in academia, Sean found his true passion lies in civil service when he joined the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2001. He has since worked on a broad range of challenges and species from pinnipeds to salmon to seabirds and cetaceans. His science experiences have taken him across the country from NMFS offices in Hawaii, California and Oregon, to serving under the NOAA Chief Scientist in Washington DC. In 2016, Sean became the Protected Species Branch Chief at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he works with teams leading the center’s ESA and MMPA research portfolio which includes salmon, marine mammals and sea-turtles. He is currently enjoying a ‘sweet spot’ in his career, where he remains engaged with the science but is able to affect change at higher levels. In this capacity, he is working to focus scientific effort on the ecological challenges of our marine resources in order to remove the ambiguity around stakeholder concerns, thus enabling managers and stakeholders to make scientifically informed decisions to ensure sustainability of our marine resources. He is also enjoying being much closer to his family farm in NY and exploring life in his home on beautiful Cape Cod with his pups, wife, and new daughter.

About the speaker:

Tom received a BA from Wabash College (1966) and served in the US Army from 1966-1969. He received a PhD in Botany from the University of Washington (1973) then spent three years at UBC on a postdoctoral fellowship before joining the Washington Department of Natural Resources in 1976. At WDNR he researched the cultivation of seaweeds for the production of phycolloids and food, and developed and managed programs for management and inventory of seaweeds and seagrasses on state-owned aquatic lands. He served on the Nearshore Science Team for the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Project. He has taught in various universities and consulted overseas in seaweed aquaculture. Since his retirement in 2011, he is focusing on researching marine algal biodiversity, the role of kelp in marine ecosystems, on kelp restoration, and on teaching. He was lead biologist for an ARPA-E project to grow kelp for biomass and currently is the biologist for the ARPA-E grant “ UNrealized Critical Lanthanide Extraction via Sea Algae Mining (UNCLE-SAM): Domestic production of critical minerals from seawater”. He helped in developing the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan, and acts in an advisory role for the NW Straits Commission and Pew Trust grant “Kelp conservation through coordinated management and science”. He sits as an alternate on the Strategic Advisory Council for the OCNMS and is on the Science Advisory Committee for the NW Straits Initiative.

Check out his websites here and here.

Talk synopsis:

Sirtuins are regulators of the proteome by modifying metabolic enzymes, chaperones and anti-oxidative stress proteins to improve the response of organisms to several environmental stressors.  We tested their role in two marine mussel species that vary in their response to heat and salinity stress.  A key question for integrative biology is if these molecular differences affect phenotypes at higher levels of organismal organization.  We tested this assumption while simultaneously monitoring the molecular changes accompanying changes in ciliary activity, particle velocity of the gill, a feeding organ in mussels, and whole organism filtration rates.  The presentation will discuss the challenges of doing integrative biology.

About the speaker:

Karen Crow is a Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, and will be the MLML Visiting Scientist for the 2021/22 academic year. She earned a B.S. in Environmental Biology from the CSU Northridge, a M.S. in Marine Science from MLML/SFSU, a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Yale University. 

While her training and background is squarely based in evolutionary biology, her interests and research are primarily centered on EvoDevo (Evolutionary Developmental Biology). She studies the evolution of vertebrate diversity by investigating the genetic basis of variation in body plans. She has investigated the evolution of the paddlefish rostrum, barbels in fishes, novel sphincters in gobies, fin and limb modifications in batoids and other fishes, and the role of genome duplication on body plan evolution and diversity of teleosts. Because reproduction is the currency of fitness, she also investigates alternative reproductive strategies in derived vertebrates including surfperches (the only vertebrate that gives birth to "teenagers"), pipefishes (the only vertebrate that exhibits male pregnancy) , and bidirectional sex change in gobies (the ultimate in gender flexibility).

About the speaker:

Douglas McCauley is an Associate Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and the Director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative. Prof. McCauley is a Sloan Research Fellow in the Ocean Sciences and member of World Economic Forum’s Friends of Ocean Action.

Prof. McCauley has degrees in political science and biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in Biology from Stanford. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford, Princeton, and UC Berkeley. 

Prof. McCauley’s research centers upon using advances in marine science, ocean data, and marine technology to promote ocean health. Incorporating new forms of tech into ocean science is an especially important part of the DNA of research in McCauley’s laboratory. 

Research from the McCauley Lab has been published in leading research journals such as Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA and has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Time, US National Public Radio, and at the World Economic Forum.

About the speaker:

Erik C. Franklin is an Associate Research Professor at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa who leads a group focused on basic and applied ecological and fisheries research in tropical coastal and marine ecosystems to inform the sustainable management of living resources under a changing climate. His research, teaching, and mentorship involves field, lab, and computational methods including open-circuit and rebreather dive surveys, life history studies, population and stock assessments, MPA design and evaluation, and geospatial, statistical, and simulation modeling for native and invasive marine fishes, corals, invertebrates, and cetaceans with projects in Hawai‘i, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, Fiji, Indonesia, Palau, and Papua New Guinea. His work has appeared in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Fisheries Research, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Journal of Fish Biology, and Corals Reefs with a wide dissemination of results to the public through regional, national, and international newspaper articles and radio interviews. His work has been funded by the NSF, NOAA, EPA, USGS, and private foundations. Dr. Franklin is faculty in three graduate programs at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: Marine Biology, Geography and Environment, and Zoology. He also serves as a Member of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee and a Fellow of the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, an M.S. from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and a B.S. from the University of California at San Diego. When not doing the research thing, he is surfing, doing crosswords, or spending time with family. 

About the speaker:

Dr. Frank Fish is a Professor of Biology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where he has been on the faculty since 1980 and is the director of the Liquid Life Laboratory. He received a B.A. in Biology from SUNY Oswego in 1975. He completed a M.Sc. in 1977 and a Ph.D. in 1980 from the Zoology Department of Michigan State University.

Dr. Fish has published over 180 research articles, government reports, patents, and book chapters. He is currently an associate editor for the journal Marine Mammal Science and he served on the editorial board of the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

Dr. Fish's research focuses on the energetics and hydrodynamics of aquatic locomotion by vertebrate animals, including marine mammals. His research has been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Recent projects have included examinations of the evolution of swimming modes in aquatic mammals, energetics and maneuverability of aquatic animals, hydrodynamic design of biological control surfaces, biomimetic designs for propulsion, and swimming performance by marine animals for the development of bio-robots.

Dr. Fish has appeared on a number of television shows including the PBS series Evolution and the BBC production Walking with Prehistoric Beasts. His work has been highlighted in magazines, including Science, Science News, National Geographic, and Scientific American. He received the Society for Marine Mammalogy Award for Excellence in Science Communication and he was a finalist for the 2018 European Inventor Award.

About the speaker:

Darcy Taniguchi is an Assistant Professor at CSU San Marcos. Her research explores the characterization and response of marine communities and organisms to varying environmental conditions and interactions. Most of her work focuses on understanding planktonic communities. She received her BA in Mathematics and BS in Biology from UC San Diego and received her MS and PhD in Biological Oceanography from UC San Diego.