Highlight
Scientist on the ice: Ecomechanics from Antarctica to a New Jersey School.
Scientist on the ice. IGERT trainee Dennis Evangelista investigating the ecomechanics of anchor ice.
Achievement/Results
As a participant in an NSF sponsored Marine Biology course at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, CiBER IGERT trainee Dennis Evangelista, from the University of California at Berkeley, explored the mechanisms of anchor ice information and propagation with a team of scientists led by Mark Denny from Stanford University. Sea ice typically forms at the ocean’s surface, but given a source of supercooled water, an unusual form of ice “anchor ice” can grow on objects in the water column or at the seafloor. For several decades, ecologists have considered anchor ice to be an important agent of disturbance in the shallow-water benthic communities of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, and potentially elsewhere in polar seas. Divers have documented anchor ice in the McMurdo communities, and its presence coincides with reduced abundance of the sponge Homaxinella balfourensis, which provides habitat for a diverse assemblage of benthic organisms. However, the mechanism of this disturbance has not been explored.
In Antarctica, Dennis demonstrated species differences in anchor ice formation and propagation characteristics. Anchor ice also forms readily on sediments, from which it can grow and adhere to organisms. Dennis’ results are consistent with, and provide a potential first step toward, explaining disturbance patterns observed in shallow polar benthic communities, in other words, mechanics at the small scale shaping community composition and ecology. Furthermore, the research suggests that surface tissue characteristics such as surface area, rugosity, and mucus coating affect ice formation on invertebrates. These fundamental discoveries have potential for biologically-inspired designs to limit ice formation, such as on airplane wings, ship and marine structures.
The team presented their results at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting in January 2011 at Salt Lake City, UT (Denny, M., K. Dorgan, D. Evangelista, A. Hettinger, J. Leichter, W. Ruder, I. Tuval.
Anchor ice and benthic disturbance in shallow Antarctic waters: interspecific variation in initiation and propagation of ice crystals.) As Dennis explains, “These discoveries are the result of interdisciplinary teams working at several scales and combining the strengths of engineering and biology.”
During his time conducting research on anchor ice formation, Dennis interacted with 3rd graders at PS 23 Mahatma Gandhi Elementary School in Jersey City, NJ, an inner-city, federally funded Title I school. Dennis blogged and e-mailed with the class and provided integrated, weekly science lessons. He followed this up with a spring visit to the class. The letter from the teacher sent to our CIBER IGERT Program and Office of Polar Programs describes the interaction:
“To whom it may concern: I wanted to write to thank the National Science Foundation for helping encourage my class of third graders to be curious about science and exploration. Dennis Evangelista, a PhD student at UC Berkeley in Integrative Biology supported by NSF, was a participant in your Antarctic Marine Biology course in McMurdo Station, Antarctica… He and a portion of the group studied the eco-mechanical interactions of benthic organisms with anchor ice. While there, he corresponded with my classroom through letters, emails, and blog entries, sending them photos and videos about Antarctica and answering their questions. My students gained a valuable, authentic learning experience, posing scientific questions, making connections with scientists, reading about biology, science, and exploration, and writing and communicating with each other about marine organisms, ecology and evolution, weather and meteorology, and the history of Antarctic exploration. The students organized an Antarctica bulletin board and traded several letters to our scientist in the field. He was able to follow up this long-distance interaction with a visit to our school to talk to the students about science in general and biology and biomechanics in particular, as well as climate change.”
IGERT trainee Dennis Evangelista reports that the class went on to pass their required NJ State ASK exams, including some very high scores in math and science. These are tangible broader impacts of programs like the NSF funded Antarctic Marine Biology course and the IGERT Program. The interaction has continued, with a new group of student scientists being encouraged to ask questions about mantises, venus fly traps, pterosaurs, and anemometers, and the world around us.
Address Goals
Discovery.
Antarctic Ice Ecomechanics.
Current challenges in science, engineering, industry and society demand research-based skills as well as the ability to collaborate on diverse, interdisciplinary teams. The goal of UC Berkeley’s Center for interdisciplinary Biological-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER) IGERT is to train biology and engineering PhD students how to develop mutualistic teams that energize transformative, interdisciplinary, basic research and translate fundamental discoveries into societal benefits. The CiBER IGERT uniquely focuses on how organismal design enables them to maintain functionality in environments that are spatially complex and vary with time. Because biological systems evolved in habitats with variable terrains subjected to turbulent wind or water currents, the principles of how biological motion systems operate should be especially useful in the design of engineered systems that must function in the real world.
Dennis’ discoveries exemplify our proposed programmatic goals. Trained as an engineer, but conducting his PhD research in biomechanics, Dennis had a unique perspective to assist in a transformative discovery. Certainly, he could have only contributed to this discovery through an interdisciplinary team that had knowledge of the fundamental environmental, ecological and organismal effects of anchor ice. The view that you cannot understand the organism in isolation of its environment, allowed Dennis and his team to propose a variety of characteristics that affect ice formation on invertebrates that others with training in isolated, laboratory systems might not have considered.
In our IGERT, we firmly believe that to sustain the most effective interdisciplinary collaborations, engineers need to know how their discipline can advance biology and biologists need to learn how the principles they are discovering by studying nature can be generalized to provide inspiration for engineering design. Our training program in transformative, interdisciplinary research stresses the process of translating biological discoveries into engineered devices. Dennis exemplifies this thinking as he is already considering the possibilities of how his team’s fundamental discoveries have potential for biologically-inspired designs to limit ice formation, such as on airplane wings, ship and marine structures.
Learning.
Scientist on the ice.
As IGERT Trainee Dennis Evangelista puts it, “the CiBER IGERT has a research is teaching philosophy. Research and teaching can go hand in hand, and good teaching can also be outreach.” IGERT Trainee Dennis Evangelista took this philosophy several steps forward, all the way to Antarctica. During his time conducting research on anchor ice formation, Dennis blogged and e-mailed with the class and provided integrated, weekly science lessons with 3rd graders at PS 23 Mahatma Gandhi Elementary School in Jersey City, NJ, an inner-city, federally funded Title I school.
Dennis’ efforts in education and outreach surpass the goals of our IGERT. Dennis has always been an advocate for educating the next generation of scientists. Clearly, this hands-on research approach translates into his educational philosophy. Previously, Dennis has taught the core CiBER-IGERT research-based teaching lab. He was able to stimulate undergraduate and graduate student research projects through his knowledge, enthusiasm and energy. Here, Dennis has shown that he can do this at the K-12 level and that he values this endeavor. Moreover, Dennis sees the importance of outreach to underrepresented groups who have considerable barriers to success. By sharing his advances with public elementary school children, Dennis Evangelista hopes that the next generation will see more clearly why we must preserve the diversity of species and their environments – before their secrets are lost forever.
