Grace defended her Honors thesis on Ascidian abundance and diversity in shellfish farms of North Carolina on April 23, 2024! Congrats Grace!

The 52nd Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting was held in Charleston, South Carolina (USA) from April 10-14, 2024 at the Charleston Marriott.

• Brandon presented his results on gut microbiome diversity in whales
• Brenna presented her findings on the effect of different preservation methods on microbial composition in ascidians
• Susanna discussed sea-squirt diversity and abundance in North Carolina shellfish farms

Once more, UNCW  was well represented at the event, with numerous faculty, students and alumni present! Go Seahawks!

CONGRATULATIONS to:

• Taryn Houlihan for her honors thesis defense on sulfur oxidizing bacteria in sea-squirts (April 2, 2024), and
  
• Brandon Rose for his master thesis defense on characterizing the gut microbiome of whales (April 9, 2024)
  

Susanna recently traveled to Spain (January 16-22, 2024) to give a seminar for the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics, and evaluate the PhD defense of Dr. Carles Galià-Camps.

Brenna Hutchings, Patrick Erwin, and iMESA Lab collaborators: Grace Kennedy and Bradley Tolar, presented their research on ascidian symbionts in Durham, NC, November 4, 2023

The iMESA Lab had a great time informing the general public of what we do during the UNCW Center for Marine Science Open House, October 7, 2023.
Over 750 people came to learn more about our work, the oceans and ways they can help, LOVE IT!

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