Accolades and Awards

Recognition from the Scientific Community

Assistant Professor Roxanne Beinart received a URI Division of Research Excellence Award for Early Career Research and Scholarship, recognizing her groundbreaking research is in deep-sea biology, high pressure systems, and chemosynthetic and anoxic ecosystems.

Ph.D. student Isobel Dove was awarded a Schlanger Ocean Drilling Fellowship. Her research will generate an 11,000-year record of nitrogen isotope to evaluate how environmental changes in coastal Antarctic zones affect atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Ph.D. student Matt Dunn was awarded the K.C. Donnelly Externship Award Supplement, established by the Superfund Research Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The externship funds Dunn’s travel to Chicago, where he will work in the laboratory of Cyclopure, Inc., a small business that works on developing affordable solutions for drinking water treatment.

Ph.D. student Victoria Fulfer was awarded a 2022-2023 Fulbright U.S. Student Program Research Award to fund her research into the plastic waste problem in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Ph.D. student Asta Habtemichael was chosen as one of 20 environmental scholars to receive a Switzer Environmental Fellowship. The fellowship will help support his research into the links between PFAS contaminants and the food and health security of local and indigenous communities.

Ph.D. student Erin Jones received a NASA R.I. Space Grant fellowship. Her project will link microzooplankton ecology with carbon-export processes by examining the structure & variability of microzooplankton communities and trophic function.

Ph.D. student Sarah Lang received a NASA R.I. Space Grant fellowship to use state-of-the-art remote sensing methods to quantify how submesoscale (0.1 – 10 km) dynamics affect phytoplankton and particulate organic carbon distributions in the ocean. This research is in conjunction with NASA’s Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics and Vertical Transport Experiment.

Professor Rainer Lohmann, a world-renowned expert in marine organic geochemistry and persistent chemical pollutants called PFAS, received the Scholarly Excellence Award as part of the 2022 URI Foundation & Alumni Engagement Excellence Awards. Lohmann was recognized for his commitment to science and his concern for public health.

Lohmann was also selected as one of the winners of the 2021 Environmental Science & Technology Super Reviewer Award. This award recognizes those scientists who perform peer review for ES&T in their area of expertise to a consistently high standard, in a timely fashion, and on a frequent basis over multiple years.

Graduate Basia Marcks, Ph.D. ’22, was selected as a 2023 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship finalist. Marcks will receive hands-on experience transferring science to policy and management through a one-year appointment with federal government offices in Washington, D.C.

Professor Susanne Menden-Deuer was elected as the next president of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. She will begin a two-year term as president-elect on July 1, followed by two years as president (2024-2026) and two additional years as past-preseident (2026-2028)

Postdoctoral fellow Matt Ramirez received the URI Chaplains Association MLK Peacemaker’s Award for his outstanding work among the Bay Campus community as a leader in improving justice, diversity, equity and inclusion at multiple levels.