Achievement

Our first achievement was a successful field survey in August and sampling experiment in October done at the Plum Island Estuary Long Term Ecological Research (PIE LTER) site run by colleagues at our partner institution Marine Biological Laboratories (MBL). This required substantial planning regarding logistics of access to the site, engaging researchers who carry out some of the long-term studies at PIE, and lectures and field trips led by PIE Principal Investigator, Dr. Anne Giblin from MBL. This aspect of the project involved an ecosystems ecologist (Dr. Giblin), a microbial ecologist (Dr. Zoe Cardon from MBL, co-PI of the IGERT), an evolutionary geneticist and genomicist (Dr. David Rand from Brown University, IGERT PI), and applied mathematician (Dr. Charles Lawrence from Brown University), a microbial geneticist and computational biologist (Dr. Dan Weinreich from Brown University), plus the three trainees. This engaged each of the four main disciplines of our IGERT program.