Lab News

Dr. Kristina Cammen was honored this week to be nominated and recognized by her students for her role as their mentor. Each year, students are asked to nominate faculty who have had an important impact on them, and Kristina was one of the faculty recognized with a University of Maine Faculty Impact Award during this year’s Maine Impact Week.

“Kristina is endlessly positive and puts an optimistic spin on research challenges… Kristina is also very welcoming and inclusive and has created a lab culture where even students who tend to be quieter have the space to participate in discussion.” – Alice Hotopp, PhD candidate

Emma Newcomb received High Honors today after defending her Honors thesis entitled Breaking down “harassment” to characterize trends in human interaction cases in Maine’s pinnipeds. Emma’s work represented the culmination of three years of work in collaboration with Marine Mammals of Maine and Allied Whale. As part of this research collaboration, Emma led the development of a new scheme for categorizing human interaction cases with seals that strand on the beaches in Maine, and put her new scheme to work, characterizing trends in human interaction cases over the past decade.

Emma will graduate this spring from the University of Maine with Honors and a Bachelors degree in Marine Sciences.  After graduation, she will continue to work with the marine mammal stranding network and pursue graduate school opportunities.

Congratulations to Lauri Leach, who defended her Masters thesis, entitled Assessing predator risk to diadromous fish conservation in the Penobscot River Estuary. Lauri’s research assessed both the potential impact (through a spatiotemporal analysis of seal and prey distribution) and realized impact (through an analysis of seal-induced injury on Atlantic salmon) of seals in the Penobscot River. She also developed a photo-identification catalog of seals for future tracking of individuals in the Penobscot River. To learn more about Lauri’s fieldwork on the Penobscot River, check out her blog posts here.

Please join us in congratulating Lauri on this professional milestone and wishing her well on her next adventure as a Knauss fellow for the Marine Mammal Commission in Washington, DC!