People

Dr. Walker Smith, VIMS Principal Investigator
Dr. Walker Smith Smith is in charge of the overall project, data analysis, and publication.

Sasha Tozzi
Sasha Tozzi is a PhD student with Dr. Walker Smith. This is his 2nd year on the IVARS project and his 5th cruise in the Southern Ocean. His interests are the factors and conditions that lead to phytoplankton blooms in the ocean and their consequences at regional and planetary scales. More specifically he is interested in marine phytoplankton ecology and photophysiology. As part of his dissertation he is looking at the role of iron and light on blooms of diatoms and Phaeocystis antarctica in the Ross Sea. At sea he is responsible for deploying and analyzing data from the FRRF (Fast Repetition Rate Fluorometer) and PAM (Pulse Amplitude Modulated Fluorometer) and he is an enthusiastic member of the water collecting and processing team. Part of the experimental work for his dissertation is done in McMurdo Station, where he is been for two seasons between cruises. Last but not least he is the only Italian member of the group. [top]

Jenny Dreyer
Jenny Dreyer began working as a science technician with Dr. Walker Smith after completing her Master's degree in the Department of Biology at the College of William and Mary in August 2004. This is her 2nd year working on the IVARS project and 3rd IVARS cruise. Some of her main responsibilities include analyzing POC, PON, biogenic silica, and processing the IVARS sediment-trap samples.[top]

Jill Peloquin
Jill Peloquin is a PostDoc with Dr. Walker Smith and has participated in the first three years of IVARS. She is primarily interested in the environmental factors that control phytoplankton primary production and taxonomic composition and has participated in 10 Southern Ocean cruises. In IVARS, she helps deploy the nitrate and silica analyzers and has collected a multi-year data set of vertically and spatially detailed measurements of photochemical efficiency through the use of pulse amplitude modulated fluorometry. To better constrain the spatial heterogeneity in the Ross Sea, she analyzes remote sensing images (SeaWiFS) to scale up on-board measurements of chlorophyll a and primary production. Together, these tools allow her to better understand the size and shape of the phytoplankton bloom, its seasonal progress, and how it changes from year to year. [top]

Carol Pollard
Ms. Carol Pollard analyzed nutrients on the cruise with Ms. Bettina Sohst.

Participants from other institutions:

Univ. of Charleston