Meeting Abstract
Follow the Yellow Brick Road, from an undergraduate at the University of Iowa with a keen interest in eggs to the Director of a Marine Lab, helping to network the many Pacific Marine Labs into a comprehensive Pacific Ocean Observatory. Tracing my path reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, with a yellow brick road that holds many surprises, plot twists and turns, featuring a cast of interesting characters and never really reaching a conclusion. It starts in the Midwest, in Iowa, and ends for now in the Pacific Northwest, on San Juan Island, at Friday Harbor Labs. The constant throughout my scientific career has been a love of invertebrate eggs and embryos, which has blossomed into studying genomics and marine biodiversity. My lab works on evolution and development, studying both closely related species with radically different body plans and very divergent taxa, in order to understand the evolution of body plans at both genetic and morphological levels. This research has taken me to some amazing places and left me with some incredible friends, mentors and colleagues. I’ll conclude my lecture with some thoughts about the future of Marine Labs and how they continue to inspire and educate people about science with experiential learning. I’ll also talk about the importance of ocean monitoring, networks and citizen science in an increasingly complex human society.
