Seminar: Patricia Thibodeau, C-AIM Post-Doc Finalist

P_Thibodeau
Image courtesy Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Please join us Wednesday, May 29, 12-1 p.m., in the Ocean Science and Exploration Center (OSEC), Room 115, at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography-Bay Campus, for a seminar by Patricia Thibodeau, entitled, “Environmental controls on pteropod ecology and physiology along the Western Antarctic Peninsula.”

Read the abstract for Thibodeau’s seminar.

Click for campus map (OSEC building is #1), as well as directions to the URI GSO.

Thibodeau (bio) is a finalist for a C-AIM postdoctoral fellowship in the category Coastal Marine Plankton Ecology. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science under the mentorship of Dr. Deborah K. Steinberg.

Her current research interests lie primarily in the field of zooplankton ecology, and she brings her broad interdisciplinary experience in biological oceanography, time-series analysis, biogeochemistry, and experimental biology in coastal and open ocean systems to that research.

Thibodeau is specifically focused on how climate change, such as warming and ocean acidification, affects pteropod population dynamics and physiology, and in turn their contribution to biogeochemical cycling.

As a C-AIM postdoc fellow, Thibodeau will contribute to the analysis and interpretation of the existing multi-decadal data collected by the long-term plankton time series in Narragansett Bay. The time series includes an extensive physical, chemical and biological data set which contains information that will immediately impact both C-AIM Research Thrust 1 and Thrust 2, with longer term impacts for Thrust 3.

She will work closely with both empiricists and modelers, with the goal of identifying the underlying environmental parameters driving plankton community dynamics in the bay and to facilitate efforts to forecast important phenomena in the plankton that can have ecological, economic and societal impacts, such as harmful algal blooms.

Thibodeau also has keen interests in supporting and mentoring underrepresented minority scientists, and in public outreach and scientific education, all of which are important elements of the C-AIM program.

Please mark your calendars and join us for the seminar.

Best Regards,

Dr. Lewis Rothstein
Co-Principal Investigator, RI C-AIM
Professor, URI Graduate School of Oceanography