Marie L. Cuvelier – Ph.D. Student Fall 2004 - 2010
Marie completed her dissertation entitled "New insights into the diversity, distribution and ecophysiology of marine picoeukaryotes" in 2010. In addition to co-authoring several papers in the lab Marie is first author on a publication on a novel protistan group in Environmental Microbiology as well as one on the importance of picoplanktonic prymnesiophytes to oceanic systems in PNAS. Marie also performed a series of photophysiology experiments on prasinophytes which will shape a third manuscript. During her Ph.D. Marie participated in many cruises and was a wonderful team player.

Elif Demir – Post-doctoral researcher Fall 2007 - summer 2010
Elif performed her Ph.D. at the University of Delaware in the laboratory of David Hutchins where she worked on harmful algal species. Elif joined the lab here in autumn 2007 and worked on qPCR primer-probe development for enumerating different pico-prasinophytes. Elif participated in several North Pacific cruises as well as one in the Florida Straits, was a co-author on two publications, and played an active role in mentoring undergraduates who came to the lab. Elif has now moved to work on the Environmental Sample Processor in the Scholin lab group.

Alyssa Gehman – Research Technician Oct 2008 - summer 2010
Alyssa performed a master's at Western Washington University on the rocky intertidal before joining the lab as a research technician. Here she ran and analyzed flow cytometry data, performed sorting experiments, participated in cruises and managed the lab! Alyssa has had a long standing interest in parasitology and has now started a Ph.D. at the University of Georgia on that topic.

Heather M. Wilcox – Senior Research Technician Dec 2007 - Dec 2009
Heather moved from the field of immunology to join the lab in 2007. She has been responsible for developing our metagenomic extraction procedures and managing the ever growing axenic culture collection in addition to many other activities in the lab, including master troubleshooter for RNA work. Prior to joining the lab Heather also played a major role for brief episodes setting up the lab at Miami, and helping with the move/set up at MBARI. Heather is now moving back to the 'human' world and will have direct involvement with patient care.

Harriet Alexander - Undergraduate Summer Intern 2008, Honors Thesis Student 2009-2010
Harriet quickly mastered (the fastest ever in the lab!) the high speed flow sorter and explored the cell cycles of Micromonas and Ostreococcus, as well as helping all sorts of folks out by running their samples. She also developed a method for staining the mitochondria of these tiny cells. Harriet is a biology and math double major at Wellesley College and plans to do her honors thesis in biology.

Julie Vassar - Undergraduate Summer Intern 2009
Julie came to the lab for the MBARI summer internship after her sophomore summer at Smith College. Julie learned to love PCR - always upbeat and cheery, not to mention ready to run another PCR and Gel ASAP!

Rory M. Welsh – Research Technician Fall 2005 - Fall 2008
Rory joined the lab in fall of 2005 and quickly became the fall back guy – maintaining the axenic cultures, mastering the high speed flow sorter and participating in a large number of research expeditions – taking him to the tropical Atlantic, South Pacific and the North Pacific. He is well known for his ‘heart of gold’ and for being a patient teacher. He moved with the lab from UM to MBARI in 2007 and stayed on for a year to get the lab up and running in its new home.

Sarah McDonald, Ph.D. - Post-Doctoral Associate Winter 2007 - Summer 2008
Sarah came to the lab in January of 2007 from the Stazione Zoologica in Napoli, Italy after finishing her Ph.D. in which she explored natural eukaryotic phytoplankton populations using genetic markers. In Miami she entered into the field of genomics and designed experiments to explore Micromonas nitrogen and carbon utilization via genome-informed gene expression – she also continued with this project after the move to MBARI.

Darcy McRose - Undergraduate Summer Intern 2008
Darcy spent the summer after her senior year at Stanford University working on growth and photosynthetic activity of axenic strains from the different Micromonas clades as well as Ostreococcus. This beautiful piece of research involved a huge amount of work – for which she spent just about every day of the summer in the lab.

Alejandra Ortiz – Undergraduate Summer Intern 2008 (2007 & 2006!)
Aleja first joined the lab the summer after her senior year in high school and then left for Wellesley College. She took on an 18S rRNA gene sequence analysis using consed in her first summer. Since then she has participated in, and orchestrated intense culture based studies on algal response to high light and UV exposure. Wellesley College

Sharria Scavella – High School Student Researcher Summer 2007
Sharria’s is interested in the medical field – but joined our lab to learn basic science. She worked on nitrogen growth physiology of Micromonas. At the end of the summer she placed 3rd for her talk on this research at a in a national competition held in Bethesda Maryland.

Heike Moehlig, Ph.D. - Post-Doctoral Associate Spring 2006 – Spring 2007
Heike completed her Ph.D. in Germany in the field of immunology and came to the lab to work on phagocytosis in marine nanoflagellate predators. She also contributed to our work on the distribution of a newly identified algal group (putatively photosynthetic), the Biliphytes. While in Miami Heike also became a sailing aficionado.

Augustin Engman – Undergraduate Researcher Fall 2006- Fall 2007
Gus joined the lab and went to sea in his first week! He worked on bacterial-algal interactions and participated in Micromonas growth experiments. His research expeditions include the Florida Straits, Florida to Cape Verde and back, and orchestrating our efforts in the North Pacific transects. Gus finished his B.S. in June of 2007 and stayed on for another half year to help the lab transition to MBARI, and perform the North Pacific research. Gus has gone on to study stream ecology at the Department of Marine Sciences, University of Puerto Rico.

Joshua Lake – Undergraduate Extern, MIT Independent Activities Period 2006
Joshua came to the lab while working on his degree in Materials Science at MIT. He worked to set up a system in the lab for incubating phytoplankton in an isothermal environment where they could be exposed to both high light and UV radiation. He also worked on cell cycle analysis of prasinophytes using flow cytometry and the nucleic acid stain Sybr green.

Jason A. Hilton - Undergraduate Honors Thesis Student Spring 2005-Summer 2006
Jason undertook the Florida Straits work, specifically the Fluorescence in situ Hybridizations (under th guidance of Dr. F. Not) on different eukaryotic algae. He organized and performed a large number of the Florida Straits expeditions. Jason has gone on to a Ph.D. program at the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz in the lab of Jon Zehr.

Vladimer Cessant - Undergraduate Researcher Summer 2005
Vladimer joined the lab during his junior summer at University of Miami.

Fabrice Not, Ph.D. - Post-Doctoral Associate Fall 2004 – Dec 2005
Fabrice is now a faculty member at the Station Biologique de Roscoff (not@sb-roscoff.fr). We had a lucky coincidence of an unexpected award coming in (The Moore Young Investigator Award to AZW) and Fabrice finishing his Ph.D. and still waiting on proposals he had written to stay in Europe. Fabrice initiated the Florida Straits time series and worked on the diversity of picoeukaryotes in the Sargasso Sea.