Announcements

Congratulations!

• A group of Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) scientists from UH and Montana State will receive the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences for the best scientific paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the areas of physcical sciences and mathematics. Read more about it in the Honolulu Advertiser.

• Science paper “Unicellular Cyanobacterial Distributions Broaden the Oceanic N2 Fixation Domain” by Moisander et al. on 25 Feb 2010.

• Nature paper “Metabolic streamlining in an open-ocean nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium” by Tripp et al on 04 Mar 2010.

Ecological Dissertations in the Aquatic Sciences (Eco-DAS) IX

The Eco-DAS IX symposium will be held in October 2010. Applications are invited from new PhDs (PhD received between 1 June 2009 and 1 June 2011). The application deadline is 31 March 2010. To learn more about the symposium, click here. Download the advertisement PDF.

Gordon Research Conference and Graduate Research Seminar

This meeting on "Oceans & Human Health” will be held
13-18 June 2010 at the Univ. of New England, Biddeford, ME. Applications must be submitted by 23 May 2010. Please click here for details about the meeting and how to apply.

GEMS funding available

Grants for Education in Microbial Science (GEMS) are mini-grants (up to $1500) to promote microbial science literacy. Next deadline: Tuesday 01 June.

Previous announcements are available on the Archived News and Announcements page.

Congratulations to Penny Chisholm!

Photo of Sallie Chisholm. C-MORE Co-PI Sallie W. Chisholm, AKA “Penny” (MIT), will be awarded the very prestigious Alexander Agassiz Medal at a special ceremony on 25 April 2010 during the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. This is a great honor — perhaps the greatest in the field of oceanography. Past recipients include many of the giants of the field: Defant, Gran, Sverdrup, Deacon, Revelle, Redfield, Steele, Ewing, Munk, Stommel, Broecker, Wyrtki, and Prince Albert I of Monaco, to name a few. Penny’s citation recognizes her pioneering studies of Procholorococcus, the dominant phototroph on our planet. This is a well earned achievement, and we offer our heartfelt congratulations!

C-MORE Hale Cornerstone Set

Photo of setting C-MORE Hale cornerstone. On 19 January 2010, at about 0900 hrs, the cornerstone for the construction of C-MORE Hale was put into place by one of the project’s masons. Placement of the ceremonial cornerstone is a Masonic tradition that dates back to pre-steel building construction, when each major step in the construction of a stone building was celebrated. The cornerstone is the first stone (or in our case, the first polished architectural aggregate block) placed above ground level. This photo captures the careful, level placement of the first stone of the northeast wall by Kimo, with Eric Grabowski recording the event. This benchmark in building construction is ahead of schedule: C-MORE Hale is now scheduled for completion on or about 22 October 2010.

About the Center

Rendering of C-MORE Hale. The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) was established in August 2006 as a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Science and Technology Center. The center is designed to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the biological and ecological diversity of marine micro-organisms.

Life has its origins in the sea: the first living things were microbes. Marine microbes are the most abundant life forms on Earth, and everything about them is extraordinarily diverse: their structures, their genomes, their physiologies, and their ecological interactions with each other and with the rest of life on the planet.

As a global research information center working across disciplines, C-MORE brings together teams of experts—scientists, educators, and community members—who usually have little opportunity to interact, facilitating the creation and dissemination of a new understanding of the critically important role of marine microbes in global habitability.

The center’s mission and unifying vision is expressed it the motto: Linking Genomes to Biomes.

The Center’s activities are shared among five partner institutions:

and is coordinated at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.