July 4, 2023, iMESA Lab members Patrick Erwin, Susanna Lopez-Legentil and Brenna Hutchings joined researchers from SOKA, Marie Nydam, and CCU, Lauren Stefaniak and Nick Gulnick, to travel to Belize and collect ascidians from mangroves, reefs and seagrass meadows! We stayed at the amazing Carrie Bow Research Station (Smithsonian) for a week and returned with over 200 samples to analyze in the lab!

On Friday, May 12, 2023, we celebrated the accomplishments of our honor students Payton VanMiddlesworth and Jordan Pilcher at UNCW's Honors Medallion Ceremony.

The iMESA Lab got to talk about Invasive Sea-squirts for 5 hours at the NC Science Festival - Full STEAM Ahead!
Friday April 21, 2023 at UNCW Watson College of Education

On November 11, 2022, the iMESA Lab hosted 3 Hispanic/Latino high school students within the UNCW MI CASA program and introduced them to the cool Science we do!
Click HERE for more information about this great program lead by Centro Hispano

Brenna Hutchings, Brandon Rose and Patrick Erwin assisted to the NC branch meeting of the American Society for microbiology in Boone and presented some of the neat work they are doing on ascidian symbionts and cetacean gut microbiomes1

The UNCW James F. Merritt Million Dollar Club is an exclusive club of researchers who, due to their commitment to excellence, are on the cutting edge of research, teaching, and service, reaching $1M in total external funding during the 2022 fiscal year.

Brenna applied and successfully obtained a Ruth D. Turner scholarships in Marine Biology for her project entitled "Teamwork throughout evolutionary time: characterizing the gut and tunic associated microbiomes of four Belizean ascidian species". Priority is given to proposals involving molluscs, so Brenna's work on the ascidian microbiomes was highly regarded! Congratulations Brenna!!

iMESA Lab members Brenna Hutchings and Susanna Lopez-Legentil went to Belize July 20-28, 2022 to collect sea-squirts from harbors and mangroves!

On Friday May 13, 2022 we celebrate one more time the many accomplishments of several of our iMESA Lab members: Caylee Lindsay graduated in Biology, Mina Surprenant (co-advised with Dr. Jessie Jarvis) and Sammy Morrison obtained their Master degrees in Marine Biology and we even got to celebrate the PhD degree of Dr. Peyton Thomas (advisor Dr. Steve Kinsey), who started her thesis with sea-squirts even if she finished it with fish! So proud of the 2022 crew! Go Seahawks!

The iMESA Lab had a busy day! We had lunch to celebrate the end of the academic year and the successful Master defenses of Mina Surprenant and Sammy Morrison, and a belated birthday celebration for Brenna Hutchings. Then in the afternoon, both Sammy and Mina presented their research results one last time at the CMS Graduate Poster Session! Busy but accomplished Friday for our Lab! :)