BIOS welcomed the first student users of its new high-tech facility known as the MAGIC Room—a room designed to facilitate data analyses, scientific collaboration, and learning among students and visitors from Bermuda and abroad. Students sat at a large, U-shaped table in swivel chairs that pivoted for views of multiple screens, including a multi-screen video wall at the front of the room and an 84-inch high-definition touchscreen on an adjacent wall. As underwater gliders roamed the ocean 50 miles away, students discussed the gliders’ near-real time measurements of oxygen, salinity, current strength, and other incoming physical and chemical data.
In 1969, an educator near the town of Vernon, Connecticut began organizing one-week trips for local middle and high school students to visit BIOS, then the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR). The summer trips, known as the Vernon Bermuda Workshop, quickly gained a reputation among students as a magical chance to fly south, explore the island, take field trips into caves and to coral reefs, witness researchers in their laboratories and conduct small research projects on Bermuda wildlife.
Walwyn Hughes is known to Bermudians for his public service: he served as Director of Agriculture before becoming the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of the Environment and then the Ministry of Finance. Then in 1996 came his Senate appointment (the upper House of Bermuda’s Legislature) until his retirement in 2011. Throughout all of this, he remained a steadfast member of the BIOS board—the longest-serving member, in fact, in the history of the Institute. With a doctorate in entomology, he said he’s grateful that his service at BIOS has allowed him to stay intimately involved in science. This spring, Hughes, now 84 years old, reflected on nearly five decades on the BIOS board —and explained why fellow board members tease him about chickens.
While many students spent the summer enjoying Bermuda’s beaches and the freedom of not having to set an alarm clock, Jacari Renfroe—a 14-year old at The Berkeley Institute in his first year of senior school—showed up bright and early, five days a week for his Bermuda Program internship at BIOS.
Justin Smith was raised in a fishing family in Gig Harbor, Washington, but a crash in the local fishing economy diverted him from the family business. Knowing he liked ships and being on the water, he decided to explore oceanography in college. Within his first month at the University of Hawaii, he discovered the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program and the research vessel Kilo Moana. His volunteer position on the ship led to a job in the physical oceanography lab. By graduation in 2009 he had logged 220 days at sea, and was inspired to pursue a hands-on, “jack-of-all-trades” career as a marine technician in the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet.
It isn’t news that fewer women than men are working in the scientific, engineering and technological sectors. In the UK, just 13 per cent of workers in these industries are women. Unequal pay and funding opportunities may be part of the reason for the lack of females in these fields. The American Economic Review has published findings in a new study that confirms female scientists are still losing out on pay if they choose to have a family: married women with children consistently earn less than men and often drop out of science altogether. The UK’s research councils show that men have a 3.8 per cent higher chance of success when applying for research grants in biological sciences. However, a lack of relatable female role models might also be the reason that young women don’t embark on a career in these sectors.
When BIOS coral reef ecologist Samantha de Putron began tackling a project that required multiple, ongoing experiments to address a major portion of an overarching research question, she turned to a resource that scientists have long relied on: interns. And, much like the symbiotic algae in the corals that de Putron studies, this arrangement benefited everyone involved, including two Princeton University students who are using the opportunity to conduct their senior thesis research at BIOS.
Sean McNally, former BIOS Fall Semester student, Grant-in-Aid recipient, and teaching assistant (currently at the University of Massachusetts Boston School for the Environment), and his colleagues, recently had a paper published in the journal Limnology & Oceanography (L&O) revealing how corals influence the communities of microorganisms in the waters around them. Read more at www.whoi.edu/news-release/picoplankton
Many fields of science require, by their nature, a multidisciplinary approach. The field of catastrophic risk prediction—in which scientists combine information about forecasting, economics and both current and past climate conditions to help insurance companies deal with global unpredictability—is a perfect example. Mark Guishard, head of the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI) at BIOS, appreciates the need for diverse expertise to address complex issues that cross international boundaries. Not only does he have a background that includes 15 years with the Bermuda Weather Service and time as a reinsurance analyst and risk modeler, he also mentored RPI interns this summer with three different academic careers and plans for the future.
When science came calling for James Galloway in the mid-1970s, he was a potter building garden planters in a Virginia pool hall that he and friends had converted into a craft cooperative. He had recently earned a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at San Diego, but after receiving the degree he felt burned out by academia. Instead, with his wife Nancy (a pastel artist and potter) and a group of jewelers, wood workers, and weavers, he spent his days throwing clay on a potter’s wheel.