Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS)

BIOS Mission Statement (www.bios.edu): 

“BIOS' mission is to seek and share fundamental knowledge of the oceans through state-of-the-art scientific research, world-class field expeditions and comprehensive educational experiences.”

In Fall of 2017, I received a National Science Foundation REU grant and interned at BIOS under the mentorship of Dr. Eric Hochberg and Dr. Yvonne Sawall.  In Bermuda, I studied the relationship between the light use efficiency and reflectance of coral reef autotrophs, working towards a mathematical correlation that would allow scientists to study reef productivity by means of remote sensing.  This research is part of a larger NASA mission, the Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CoRAL), to assess the global status of reefs and predict their future.  My work included:

• Reflectance (handheld spectrometer) measurements
• Dissolved oxygen (O2 sensor) and downwelling irradiance (spectrometer) measurements
• Temperature, pH and salinity measurements 
• Maintenance of semi-natural reef environments in outdoor flumes
• Specimen collection
• MATLAB statistical analysis

 This research was supported by NSF-REU (NSF grant OCE-1460686) and the Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory Mission (NASA grant NNX16AB05G).