Author Archives: Jeff

AbSciCon session on life in high salt habitats

Posted on December 14, 2018 by Jeff

Abstract submissions are open for AbSciCon 2019!  You can check out the full selection of sessions here, however, I’d like to draw your attention toward the session Salty Goodness: Understanding life, biosignature preservation, and brines in the Solar System.  This … Continue reading →

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South Bay Saltworks

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Jeff

This is a quick post of a few photos from our trip to the South Bay Saltworks earlier this week.  Thanks to PhD students Natalia, Emelia, and Srishti for getting up early to go play in the mud, and to … Continue reading →

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Saturday morning at the office

Posted on November 6, 2018 by Jeff

Sometimes working weekends can be a lot of fun.  Last Saturday morning we carried out the second Scripps Institution of Oceanography visit by undergraduate biology majors from National University for our NSF-funded project CURE-ing Microbes on Ocean Plastics.  We recovered … Continue reading →

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Introducing OAST

Posted on November 2, 2018 by Jeff

This post has been a long time in coming!  I’m happy to announce that our Oceans Across Space and Time (OAST) proposal to the NASA Astrobiology Program has been funded, launching a 5 year, 8+ institution effort to improve life … Continue reading →

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NASA Postdoctoral Program opportunity

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Jeff

A new NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) opportunity was posted today for our Oceans Across Space and Time (OAST) initiative.  What’s OAST?  I can’t tell you yet, because the relevant press releases have been stuck in purgatory for several weeks.  Hopefully … Continue reading →

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Postdoctoral researcher sought in bioinformatics/predictive analytics

Posted on September 30, 2018 by Jeff

We have an opening for a postdoctoral scholar in the area of bioinformatics and predictive analytics.  The ideal candidate will have demonstrated expertise in one of these two areas and a strong interest in the other.  Possible areas of expertise … Continue reading →

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Separating bacterial and archaeal reads for analysis with paprica

Posted on September 7, 2018 by Jeff

One of the most popular primer sets for 16S rRNA gene amplicon analysis right now is the 515F/806R set. One of the advantages of this pair is that it amplifies broadly across the domains Archaea and Bacteria. This reduces by … Continue reading →

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We’re joining MOSAiC!

Posted on August 11, 2018 by Jeff

This has been a (rare) good week for funding decisions.  A loooooong time ago when I was a third year PhD student I wrote a blog post that mentioned the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) … Continue reading →

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CURE-ing microbes on ocean plastic

Posted on August 9, 2018 by Jeff

I was excited to learn today that our proposal CURE-ing microbes on ocean plastic, led by collaborators Ana Barral and Rachel Simmons at National University, was just funded by the National Science Foundation through the Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) program.  … Continue reading →

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A practical lesson in marine metals

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Jeff

This week Alyssa Demko from the Jenkins Lab and I dove to make repairs on our sample pump intake on the SIO pier.  Very soon the pump will supply water to our membrane inlet mass spectrometer and biological sampling manifold, … Continue reading →

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