Internships launch careers

May 21, 2012

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This past week my parents and I attended my younger brother’s college graduation in Chicago. While we were very proud of him for finishing his degree in film production, we were also celebrating the fact that he’d already taken the next step.

Kevin took part in an internship for school credit during his final semester, doing film and print media for a Chicago-based hospitality company. He worked hard throughout, I’m told, going above and beyond, and impressing his would-be employers with the skills he amassed during his years in college. So when it came time for the internship to end they brought him on full time. The ink was barely dry on his new contract by the time my family arrived for graduation.

During the ceremony, the valedictorian of my brother’s class told his fellow students that each one of them is the “protagonist of their own film,” drawing on the process of screenwriting for an analogy. He likened their collegiate years to the life that a screenwriter must invent for their protagonist before writing a script—establishing their personal histories, as well as their wants and desires, strengths and weaknesses. Then, he went on, at the end of college is where the movie begins.

While I liked the speech a lot, I disagreed with him on this final point. I don’t think it’s enough to worry only about getting good grades, college is also a time to build your hands-on skills and personal contacts. Through a job, internship or volunteer position you can get your foot in the door and show a would-be employers that you not only have book smarts, but that you’re also a hard worker.

In the context of science, research experience in college or even high school is critical for getting into graduate school or going directly into a job. So here are a few of the many ways to gain experience:

Natural resource management: Walking beaches to monitor the nests of rare birds, tagging wild animals and removing invasive species are just a few of the great outdoor activities of a natural resource manager. My best friend spent his college summers getting paid to do just that on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Massachusetts and New Jersey, and the expertise he built landed him a job with the state of Vermont after graduation. Click here and here for two natural resource management job boards.

Internship programs: A number of programs connect undergrads with scientists at universities, and many of them even pay students for their time. One such program is funded by the national government and is called Research Experienced for Undergraduates. Click here to see the wide range of disciplines and find a site near you.

Working in a lab for school credit of as a volunteer: Labs at universities and private institutions are always looking for volunteers to help with research. Often these opportunities aren’t advertised widely, so if you come across an interesting research topic or hear about a lab doing exciting work then look them up on the internet. A short email introduction can often lead to volunteer position, and be sure to try a few possibilities until one sticks.

Volunteering at aquarium or zoo: Zoos and aquariums rely heavily on volunteers for everything from taking care of animals to educating visitors. Volunteers can be a wide range of ages and both high school and college students are welcome. My girlfriend used to work at an aquarium and told me that they often hired their best volunteers when paid positions opened up. Click here to find out how to apply to be a volunteer at Birch Aquarium here in San Diego.

This list offers just a few suggestions for avenues to look down for hands-on research and outreach experience. Each one offers the chance to impress potential employers, all the while giving you a first-hand look at a potential career.

Mentors play critical role

May 13, 2012

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One of the lesser-known facts about grad school is that much of what we learn doesn’t necessarily come from professors or reading scientific papers. While both are critical to our education, other grad students also provide a wealth of information and support.

During my first year at Scripps I was required to jump into a research project. I hadn’t chosen adissertation topic, but I knew that I wanted to continue to mix biology, chemistry and geology as I had done in undergrad. It wasn’t long before I realized that corals suited my interests well, being that they’re an animal, “plant” and rock all wrapped in one.

This led me to another grad student named Jessica Carilli who was using geology and chemistry to study how corals react to changes in their environment. To conduct her research Jess was examining skeleton cores that she’d collected from boulder-shaped corals in Belize and Honduras.

Similar to a tree, corals grow a new band of skeleton each year. But the skeleton records much more than just the corals’ age. By measuring element concentrations and taking X-rays of the cores, Jess determined the temperature of the sea, the level of metal pollutants, and how frequently severe bleaching had occurred throughout the lifetime of individual colonies.

When we met, Jess was nearing the end of her dissertation and her only regret was that there just wasn’t enough time to ask the many questions that her cores could potentially answer. So after hearing about my interests, she was excited to take me under her wing and learn more from her samples.

Jess taught me how to make elemental measurements and helped me interpret my findings. She had also collected some complimentary data, and when we put it all together the project got much stronger. At the end of my first year I wrote about our joint work in a paper, along with the help of a few other researchers, and it became the first chapter of my dissertation.

Three years later, I found myself deep into my primary dissertation work in Curaçao. While I enjoyed my first year project, I had since become excited about reef ecology, and in particular, how the health of baby corals influences future generations. To investigate my new research topic I had turned to a different technique: measuring fats in coral to see how much energy they store in their tissue.

Meanwhile, Jess had graduated and taken up a postdoc position in Australia. There, she and collaborator Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia, were looking for bleaching events in skeletal cores collected from corals in the Pacific. In addition to looking into each coral’s past using techniques from Jess’ dissertation, they wanted to know the current health of the animals. To do this they turned to fat measurements, and because of the work I was already doing they turned to me.

The gist of what we found—combining all three of our areas of expertise—is that when the sea heats up, corals used to living in places where the temperature varies a lot bleach less than those used to a constant-temperature ocean, presumably because they’re better at tolerating high temperatures.

All in all, my relationship with Jess has gone from mentor to collaborator. As is the case throughout the world of science, we’ve figured out how to draw on each other’s now different skills, utilizing our individual strengths in order to solve nature’s puzzles.

Dissertation comes slowly into focus

April 30, 2012

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Friends and family often ask me what it means to be a Ph.D. student. Some wonder if it’s just more years of classes, while others think it involves a lot of teaching. While both are part of it, a Ph.D. is at its core all about our research.

At the end of five, six or even seven years of grad school, all of our research goes into a dissertation. The document can be more than 100 pages in length and is broken up into chapters, each detailing individual projects that we conducted. In the end, the quality of our dissertation is used to decide whether we’ve achieved the knowledge necessary to be called a “Dr.”

When I started grad school, I had little idea what my dissertation topic would be. I had many interests: microbial geochemistry, tropical aquaculture, and coastal pollution, along with a background in biology. But none of the topics excited me enough on their own, nor were they easy to connect.

Thankfully, my mind was put to ease from the get-go. Before I even applied to Scripps a professor here gave me some great advice: Don’t come into grad school thinking you’ve got your topic figured out. There are things that you will learn here that you didn’t know existed.

He was essentially saying that grad school is a process of intellectual growth—your knowledge will grow, and your dissertation will come into focus and continuously improve as you learn new things.

In my first year at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, I helped on a project looking at pollutants in Venice lagoon sediments (Italy that is), and then studied skeletal isotopes in corals collected from small islands in the Caribbean.

Both of these projects utilized my background in geochemistry and I liked the opportunity to dig my hands into familiar territory. But I wasn’t getting my hands dirty enough. While I was studying samples that came from incredible places, I wasn’t the one out there designing the research and working in the field.

My first opportunity to visit Curaçao came in my second year. While there I assisted with on-going projects and performed small experiments of my own. My early research question was somewhat rudimentary: how do coral babies react to fertilizer? But as I kept going back to the island, trying new things and asking new questions, my work became more refined.

The health of baby coral piqued my interest and I began throwing ideas around with my colleagues on the island and at Scripps. I wondered whether healthy adult corals make health babies, and whether health babies are better able to tolerate polluted environments. As my excitement, knowledge and experience grew, my dissertation topic came into focus.

Many professors I’ve spoken with lament the fact that some students enter grad school highly focused on one area of research, but they also fear the student who jumps from project to project. From my experience, it seem that there are no true rules for picking a topic—be it a senior or masters thesis, or a Ph.D. dissertation. It’s really about keeping an open mind, finding something that interests you, and seeing it through to the end.

Marine collector finds it all

April 30, 2012

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Phil Zerofski has two of the greatest jobs in the world.

Phil and his wife Amy own SEACAMP San Diego, a program that hosts students from all over the world at their facility on Mission Bay. Putting their hearts and souls into the program, they have built it into one of the country’s preeminent education centers for teaching hands-on marine science to elementary through high school students.

But even with SEACAMP’s success, Phil couldn’t pass up on a new opportunity: Marine collector at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of UC San Diego.

“It was my dream job,” Phil told me when I asked about his reaction to learning that the position was available. “But I would have been just as happy to stay at camp because I love it there, too.”

This past summer I huddled around a window at Scripps with a group of undergrads. Out on the ocean we saw whale spouts and “oohed” and “aahed” with each one. Phil happened to pass by and we pointed them out to him.

“I was just out collecting kelp with (a masters student) and we passed them in the boat on our way back,” he said, taking a moment to talk with the students. “They’re blues. Mothers and calves.”

The students’ mouths dropped, and their reactions reminded Phil of a time he passed blue whales surface feeding off the San Diego coast with a boat full of SEACAMP campers.

As marine collector, Phil is asked to collect everything from tiny plankton to sharks for science and teaching at SIO. He also oversees the experimental aquarium facility, where he helps grad students and faculty design and implement experiments that teach us more about the critters that live in our watery backyard. Phil sees many parallels with SEACAMP San Diego, where students learn about the ocean by interacting with animals in labs and observing them in the wild via snorkel or boat.

Phil’s own love for the ocean dates back to when, at age four, his mom gave him a book about being an ichthyologist (a.k.a. a fish scientist); after that he proudly proclaimed it as his future job to anyone who would listen.

In middle school, Phil took on a marine science internship at the Woods Hole Aquarium and in high school Phil earned his SCUBA diving certification. When it came time to attend college Phil chose Roger Williams in Rhode Island because they offered a degree in marine biology. He put himself through school thanks in part to working construction, where he learned the wide array of techniques that he put to use years later at SEACAMP and Scripps.

Phil’s love of the ocean took him to the Florida Keys, where he landed a job as a handyman at a marine science camp for kids. He spent the first summer living in a tent, battling mosquitoes and working as hard as he could at his new job.

His perseverance and array of skills led to a promotion to harbormaster for the camp. In his new position he began learning from the more experienced boatmen at the local marina who taught him how to build boats from scratch.

While the camp’s facility managers loved Phil’s construction abilities, the camp’s teachers quickly learned that he was a vast source of information about marine life, turning to him when they were stumped by students’ questions. Before long Phil started teaching at the camp and leading students on dives.

After meeting in the Keys, Phil and Amy moved to San Diego where, fourteen years ago, they purchased SEACAMP San Diego. With total control to provide a hands-on marine science education, the blending of Phil’s expertise and passions—the ocean and building things—was complete. The camp now welcomes over four thousand students a year, coming from all fifty states as well as dozens of countries.

Today Phil has more on his plate than ever—especially with his three-year-old daughter Delilah—but he says it’s easy to get up in the morning.

When I arrive at Scripps for work around 9 a.m., I often see Phil, already hours into his day, suited up to dive, fixing a plumbing leak, or transporting animals. He’s usually smiling, and I can only imagine that each day is a new adventure, each new task an exciting problem to solve

Teacher spurs curiosity

April 30, 2012

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My dad is a teacher, so naturally the idea for this week’s post came from him: Write about the teacher that inspired you to get into science.

The concept of having one inspiration may sound cliché, but I have such a person and I think that many of my peers do as well.

For me it was my AP biology teacher Karen Smereka at Montpelier High School in Vermont.

High schoolers are good at spotting a fake—a teacher can’t act overly enthusiastic about their subject because kids just won’t buy it. But when I was in high school my trained eyes told me that Karen was no fake: she was chronically enthusiastic and entirely genuine.

Karen’s lectures were speckled with insights into natural phenomena that she found fascinating, which helped enliven the compulsory curriculum. She treated us like adults, allowing us to work through complex concepts with her in an open dialogue, rather than learning through silent listening.

Karen was also good at admitting when there were questions she couldn’t answer (which wasn’t very often). Instead of getting flustered or defensive, she would get even more excited. Mid-lecture Karen would pull books off the shelf to search for the answer, or follow up by looking into a question after class.

Sometimes she’d find the answer and sometimes it just wasn’t known. When this happened we students saw that there was much left for us to sort out in the world, and this gave us a glimpse into the source of her enthusiasm.

Karen was up for researching anything, no matter how crazy it sounded. Thus, it was no surprise when she immediately agreed to help with my unique independent study proposal: I wanted to figure out what made people hungry.

At seventeen I was extremely thin. No matter what I did I couldn’t gain weight. But I thought that if I could figure out how the brain controlled hunger I could learn how to trick myself into eating more.

Karen could have scoffed at such an idea and pointed me towards a more traditional topic. Instead, she saw how interested I was, and was all in. We looked in books, sent emails and read articles, amassing as much information as we could about the brain and appetite.

I tried a few strategies, like drinking less milk with meals, but nothing seemed to work. In the end we found that the communication signals between the brain and stomach are complex, and certain aspects are poorly understood. Seizing a teaching moment, Karen pushed me to learn how multiple structures of the brain interact with the rest of the body.

The following year she helped me secure community based learning credits for shadowing neurosurgeons at our local hospital. And from there I was on my way.

Even though I eventually switched from an interest in medicine to marine biology, it was Karen’s infectious curiosity for science that pushed me towards this profession. She showed me that science can explain much of the natural world, but at the edges — when we hit the limit of what we know — is where things get most interesting.

And that’s where there’s work to do.

Careers span the waterfront

April 30, 2012

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Last week I wrote about feeling ostracized as a marine biologist who can’t scuba dive. People left me great comments, including the point that many marine scientists are in the same boat, so to speak: they don’t dive for work either.

This is absolutely true. As a tropical coral biologist, it’s unusual that I don’t dive, but in many other fields of marine science diving is unnecessary. This got me thinking about the fact that ocean-related jobs are incredibly diverse. Here are a few of my favorites:

Submarine drivers: They go to some of the deepest places of the ocean and find critters that nobody knew existed, and most do it without ever getting wet. James Cameron, the director of Avatar and Titanic, recently announced that he’s using a groundbreaking submarine to explore the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench, while driving the sub himself. Meanwhile, back on the boat, deep-sea biologists, including an SIO professor will be excitedly waiting to see what he brings back from the depths.

Engineers: Submarines, remote sensing buoy systems, remotely operated underwater vehicles and ocean-scanning satellites—engineers make them all. Thanks to their work, we are constantly going deeper and farther, discovering more about the ocean’s unknowns.

Fisheries observers: Want to improve your sea legs? Fisheries observers live aboard fishing boats and ensure that the animals being harvested are big enough and not in numbers exceeding legal catch limits. Their work is critical for managing ocean harvesting in order to ensure that we don’t drive species to extinction.

Aquarist: The survival of animals that live in public aquariums worldwide depends on professional aquarists. These people know more about what makes marine critters happy than anyone else, and I know this from experience. Working alongside aquarists at Birch Aquarium, I’ve learned an incredible amount about corals over the past few years.

Oceanographer: Open-ocean ecosystems, deep-sea communities, hydrothermal vents, oxygen minimum zones, garbage patches, currents, winds, and global seawater circulation—oceanographers do it all (not surprising given their title).

Rehabilitator: Animals such as dolphins, turtles, and birds can be stranded on beaches when they are injured or become disoriented. Rehabilitators give them help they need to get back to the ocean, nurturing them back to health while not robbing them of the instincts they need to survive on their own.

Boat captain: Cool job. Enough said.

Natural products chemist: The ocean is the source of a vast number of medically useful chemical compounds that people rely on every day. Chemists search out these compounds, characterizing their structure and understanding their function. Then they figure out how to make the compounds synthetically, removing the need to harvest them from the ocean all the while improving our health.

This is just the tip of a metaphorical iceberg. I’ve left out many jobs, but I hope in highlighting a few you get a sense of the diversity of ocean-related professions. As you can see, while many marine scientists dive for work, most don’t and still have interesting, fun and important jobs.

Marine biologist stays dry

April 30, 2012

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I’m a tropical marine biologist but I don’t SCUBA dive. Sound crazy?

While true, it’s not the whole story. I am not allowed to SCUBA dive. Knowing my medical history of heart and lung issues my doctors think it’s too risky. But even when I take the time to explain this to people, some still scoff.

“Aaron, how do you think you can work with corals if you can’t dive? I just don’t understand,” a professor from another university once asked.

“You don’t dive?” A tourist once exclaimed while in Curaçao on a dive vacation. “That makes no sense,” she laughed. “What are you thinking?”

While their comments stung, I’ve learned to smirk them away because I can confidently tell them: I make it work, and it’s not even that hard.

Their questions are practical, I suppose—the animals I study live in water that’s at least ten feet deep, so I can’t very well collect them or run experiments in their natural habitat. But my naysayers forget one key thing: science is collaborative; I don’t have to be the one dropping below the surface.

To get past my limitation I’ve linked up with two highly skilled SCUBA diving scientists, Kristen Marhaver and Mark Vermeij, who make the collections necessary for me to do my work—or better said: to do our work.

Conducting research as a group is the norm, not the exception. When people bring different expertise and ideas together the outcome can be bigger than the sum of the parts. In other words, cool things happen.

While it’s rare for a team member to be medically barred from completing part of a project, it’s common for individuals to have certain skills and lack others. That’s the whole point of working together, and this is true in just about every field of science.

Kristen and Mark are much more than expert divers, they’re coral reef ecologists. Through sharing their expertise with me, the three of us have discovered some really interesting things about what make corals tick. But our work wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t contribute.

At the field station in Curaçao I set up complex aquarium systems, collect and rear baby corals, run experiments and take samples. I then process the samples and analyze data back in San Diego. While Kristen and Mark taught me some of the techniques we use, many others I’ve learned, practiced and developed on my own.

Looking back, I wouldn’t say that I had an unusually large amount of determination or perseverance, I just believed in what I was doing and wanted to keep doing it.

Many of us have experienced someone telling us that we aren’t capable of something. Just like how I was told to forget marine biology, people may have said you can’t do something because you’re a girl, a boy, a C student, too short, too tall, and on and on.

What matters is how you respond. And I don’t mean in that moment—my encounters with naysayers left me angry and venting to friends afterward—I mean in the long-term. I could have let their comments get to me and turned away from studying corals, but I didn’t.

In many ways I was lucky to link up with Mark and Kristen: they’re great at what they do and welcomed me in as mentors and friends. But none of it would have happened had I not first proved myself as a scientist and hard worker. They didn’t offer me the opportunity on a whim, I had to work hard to build our collaboration, excelling at what I could do and accepting what I couldn’t.

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