Maria Vernet

Dr. Maria Vernet is a Senior Research Biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the foremost oceanographic institutions in the world. Oceanography is an international arena and as such, Dr. Vernet has conducted research in international settings since 1987 when she first traveled to the Arctic and in 1988 to Antarctica. She participated in one of the first research teams to study the effect of ultraviolet radiation on marine phytoplankton after the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985. Since then she has participated in a variety of multi- and interdisciplinary research projects, both national and international. Her field expeditions have taken her into the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and Southern Oceans with a variety of internationally assembled research teams. She presently participates in two Antarctic research projects studying the effects of global change in Antarctica, one on free-floating icebergs that have increased in abundance in the last decade and a second on the ecosystems of the Larsen B Ice Shelf on which she will host Amber Lancaster as a PolarTREC teacher. You can read more about Dr. Vernet and her research here [http://polarphytoplankton.ucsd.edu] and about the LARISSA project here [http://www.hamilton.edu/expeditions/Larissa]