Research Group
Hannah Burke, an undergraduate research assistant in the lab through the Aresty program, presented her poster at the Undergraduate Annual Poster Symposium. Hannah explored the relationship between anemone size and the sizes of the resident clownfish, looking for a carrying capacity or maximum ratio of total clownfish size to anemone diameter.
Pictured left to right, Zoe Kitchel, Becca Selden
This past week postdoc Dr. Becca Selden and graduate student Zoë Kitchel traveled to New York to attend the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea with the Nereus Program. In line with the meeting’s focus on promoting a decade of ocean science for sustainable development, the Nereus fellows presented on Interdisciplinary and Equity. Composed of early career scientists, the group reflected on the value of working across disciplines in their work, and how collaborations with scientists, managers, and stakeholders have improved their questions, and the interpretation of their results. Dr. Selden spoke about her work looking at adaptation strategies in fishing communities in response to shifting biomass of target species, and highlighted the need to work across disciplines during every step of the research process. Highlights included a peek into the UN general assembly, in addition to conversations with the diverse audience of UN policy advisors, diplomats, and NGOs.
Dr. Becca Selden presenting at the United Nations
We were so lucky to go on a Treetop Adventure course at Skytop lodge this week. It was a great day to be surrounded by leafy green trees and the best bunch of co-workers a person could hope for.
As part of the openscapes initiative, the Pinsky Lab met this week to discuss better data science, starting with getting everyone in the lab connected to our
GitHub organization.
We began by explaining the difference between git and GitHub and then had a 20 minute group discussion about what we should be putting on GitHub and how we wanted to use it as a group tool.
We spent the rest of the hour in breakout groups addressing different obstacles people faced as beginner GitHub users. One group was creating accounts, one group was connecting to the pinskylab organization, and another was connecting RStudio to GitHub.
It was great to see people migrating from group to group as issues were solved. By the end of our time together, it seemed like everyone had a good handle on using GitHub to share work with the rest of the team.
This open communication has leaked into the general discussion going on in our open work space. Lab members seem more comfortable with asking teammates for help, and it is exciting to see all of us getting on the same page with our data science.
We went to School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science at University of Washington in Seattle to meet with collaborators on an NSF funded Coupled Natural Human Systems Grant looking at the Dynamics of Adaptation to Climate-Driven Variability in California Current Fisheries And Fishing Communities.
What do Pinsky post-docs do in hour 18 of a 36 hour trip? Work of course. Pictured here are half of our 2018 Philippines field work team hard at work in the Hong Kong airport while waiting for a connecting flight. This is only the first leg of our multi-leg journey to reach our study site in Leyte so stay tuned for more updates.