Lab News
If you are interested in applying as a graduate student, please contact Michael as soon as possible. Students go through the MEES program (mees.umd.edu) at the University of Maryland but take classes remotely at the Chesapeake Biological Lab. Applications are due January 13th/September 30th annually.
If you are an undergraduate in the Southern Maryland region and are interested in working our lab, please contact Michael or Leanne Powers. If you are not local, please consider applying to the Maryland Sea Grant REU Program for a summer internship. Applications for the Summer REU program are due February 15th annually.
December 2017
The first Gonsior lab student has defended! Jenna Luek successfully defended her dissertation, "Characterizing organic matter in hydraulic fracturing fluids," on December 1st. Jenna is headed to the University of New Hampshire to complete a post-doc with our collaborator Dr. Paula Mouser. She will be putting together ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry and genomics data on hydraulic fracturing wastewaters and looking at degradation pathways!
The dissertation committee! From left to right- Andrew Heyes, Neil Blough, Michael Gonsior,
Jenna Luek, Phil Schmitt-Kopplin, Carys Mitchelmore, and Lee Blaney.
November 2017
Michael went on his promotional seminar tour of UMCES labs this month, talking about "Dissolved Organic Matter Characterization in Natural and Engineered Systems." Jenna presented a talk on "Developing new organic chemical tracers for hydraulic fracturing wastewaters" at the annual meeting of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry," in Minneapolis. This talk was part of a recorded session ("Fate and Effects of Complex Mixtures...") and is available online: http://setac.sclivelearningcenter.com/index.aspx?PID=9484&SID=232969
October 2017
Katie Martin traveled to Seattle to present a poster on "Septic Impact on Stream Water Quality: Evaluating Emerging Contaminants as Effluent Tracers," at the Geological Society of America Annual meeting.
September 2017
The Gonsior lab participated in the annual Chesapeake Biological Lab Open House on Saturday, September 9th. Over 500 people attended the event, and we had two activities: "Make your own brown algae worm" and hourly "Liquid nitrogen demonstrations." Both were a hit!
Michael starting a liquid nitrogen demonstration.....and the aftermath
Check out recent UMCES youtube interviews of Michael and Jenna!
August 2017
It has been a busy summer in the Gonsior lab! Michael attended a Gordon Research Conference on Drinking Water Disinfection By-products, and participated in a panel discussion with Julie Timberman (Clorox Corp.) and Jeanne Vanbriesen (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) on "Building a Strong Community of Water Professional to Meet the Challenges of a Complex and Diverse World." Leanne attended the Goldschmidt Conference in Paris on "Moderate Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DI13C) Isotope Enrichment (MoDIE) for Improved Evaluation of DIC Photochemical Production in Seawater." Jenna had two papers published, a review paper on fracturing fluids, and a paper from Kaitlyn's project on sulfate-reducing bacteria. Sydney Riemer spent 12 weeks in the Gonsior lab this summer through the Maryland SeaGrant NSF REU program, working with Leanne on elucidating the compounds present in picocyanobacteria fluorescent dissolved organic matter! Katie and Alec have been busy in the field and lab all summer too!
May 2017
The Gonsior lab made the news twice this month for two different projects! Wooo!!
NPR story on Katie and Michael's work on their SeaGrant project:
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/08/527095737/trumps-budget-would-eliminate-a-key-funder-of-research-on-coastal-pollution?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
UMCES press release on Nature Communications recent publication:
http://www.umces.edu/content/scientists-begin-unlock-secrets-deep-ocean-color-organic-matter
We are starting up a lot of outreach related to our Sargassum and Fracking research projects! Last week, Leanne and Katie welcomed girl scouts to the lab to talk about salinity and density and the ocean, and this week Leanne, Jenna, and Katie spoke with a group of homeschool students about dissolved organics, photobleaching, and their research.
Density demo (left): Two of these are salty, one is fresh, and one is cold. Can you tell which color is which based on the graduated cylinder rainbow? Home school students trying to create their own density gradient (right).
Katie demonstrating dissolving organics from tea and mud
April 2017
It's been an exciting few months in Gonsior lab! We just learned that will have a Fulbright Scholar joining our lab group from South Africa this fall. A documentary Michael was involved in making "A Plastic Ocean" was shown twice at CBL and Michael was on hand to lead a discussion following the film. And, Jenna had her first chapter of her dissertation accepted to Environmental Science and Technology (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b06213) ! Jenna presented a talk at the Chesapeake- Potomac regional chapter meeting of SETAC on iodinated organics in hydraulic fracturing wastewaters. We have a few more manuscripts across the lab group submitted and almost ready submit, so 2017 looks to be a great year for the Gonsior lab!
February 2017
Leanne and Michael are off to the Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii! Leanne will present a talk on "EVALUATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF SARGASSUM TO THE MARINE COLORED DISSOLVED ORGANIC MATTER (CDOM) POOL" and Michael will present a talk on "IN SITU SOURCES OF MARINE CHROMOPHORIC DISSOLVED ORGANIC MATTER." Both talks are in a session on INTEGRATIVE RESEARCH ON ORGANIC MATTER CYCLING ACROSS AQUATIC GRADIENTS. Best of luck on your talks and enjoy the warm weather :)
Michael's research on the fluorescence signature of cyanobacteria, a collaboration with researchers from Xiamen University, China, Helmholtz Zentrum Munich, and UMCES-IMET, has just been accepted by Nature Communications--- a great achievement! Congratulations!
UMCES CBL January/February 2017 Newsletter
January 2017
It has been a busy winter in the Gonsior Lab! Michael spent a week sampling in the Pantanal region of Brazil collecting waters from diverse lakes here with an international team of scientists from three continents. He brought back some water samples for photodegradation experiments-- some crazy lakes with super high pH- up to a pH of 12! Alec completed his written comprehensive exam, congrats Alec! Kaitlyn successfully defended her St. Mary's Project-- congrats Kaitlyn! Katie has been collecting field samples across Calvert and is pushing the detection limits of the Orbitrap system for anthropogenic contaminant tracers. Leanne has been busy in the lab and writing, and she and Michael are preparing to present in February at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Hawaii!
November 2016
In addition to analyzing samples in Munich on the FT-ICR-MS, we will also be analyzing Sargassum extract samples on the NMR at HMGU with Norbert Hertkorn. This provides a technique complementary to FT-ICR-MS to identify unique molecular structure features abundant in sargassum extracts and their photodegradation products. Meanwhile, back in Maryland...Katie has completed her first round of field sampling in Calvert County streams for her master's project funded by SeaGrant and Kaitlyn is finishing up her final paper and semester and will graduate from St. Mary's College of Maryland in December.
October 2016
Jenna is back in Munich at the Helmholtz Center analyzing lots of samples the FT-ICR-MS-- about 400! Luckily, the autosampler is up and running properly. She will be here until the end of 2016.
12T Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometer in the Analytical Biogeochemistry lab at the Helmholtz Center Munich
Exploring the English Garden in Munich on a beautiful fall day
September 2016
After presenting at ACS, researchers Chloe Roullier-Gall and Daniel Hemmler from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Health in Munich visited the Gonsior lab and ran the Aqualog for two weeks. They analyzed the fluorescence of wine samples and Maillard reaction samples (think food cooking) and ran photodegradation experiments. Classes have started back up again and Michael is co-teaching the introductory class "Interconnected Earth Systems: Land, Ocean, and Estuary" for the new Earth and Ocean Science foundation area.
August 2016
Kaitlyn, Jenna and Michael attended the ACS National meeting in Philadelphia last week and their sessions and presentations were well received! Kaitlyn's poster on sulfate-reducing bacteria producing high levels of CDOM was selected from the Geochemistry division to be a part of SCI-MIX, a poster session highlighting each section's best work! Michael and Jenna presented in a session organized by Michael and five other young assistant professors whose work focuses on advancing disinfection by-product research. Michael discussed unique disinfection byproducts from the chlorination of microcystin (an algal toxin), while Jenna talked about how biases can be introduced to non-targeted disinfection by-product research.
Kaitlyn and Jenna with Kaitlyn's poster
Kaitlyn and Michael discussing the project with George Luther (UDel)
July 2016
July was busy- the Gonsior lab and the Blough lab (UMD) went out on the R/V Hugh R. Sharp to collect water samples and sargassum for their study on the impact of sargassum on DOC and carbon cycle in seawater. Although we didn't find the huge Sargassum mats, we did find some patches and were able to bring back lots of sargassum for Leanne to experiment with!
R/V Sharp July 2016 Cruise photo!
June 2016
Lots of stuff happening this month! We have a new undergraduate student, Carolyn, here for the summer from Johns Hopkins to help out with some microbial degradation and photodegradation experiments, as well help with our backlog of fluorescence samples. Leanne Powers, our incoming post-doc on the Marine Chemistry NSF sargassum project will arrive in a week. We are preparing for the cruise associated for the project, where we will collect sargassum off of North Carolina on the R/V Hugh R. Sharp. Laura Lapham's Ph.D. student, Hadley McIntosh, and undergraduate REU student, Allison Byrd, have been spending time in the Gonsior lab, running all kinds of samples on the Aqualog and photodegradation system- from Arctic Lake water to the Chesapeake Bay sediment pore waters. Jenna has been sorting out issues related to the solid phase extraction of different iodine species in an effort to understand how fracking wastewaters look using ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry. Michael, Kaitlyn, and Jenna all had abstracts accepted to the ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia (August) and will present in the ENVR and GEO sections.
April 2016
This semester has gone too fast! Michael is teaching a course with Laura Lapham on Analytical Techniques in Environmental Chemistry, and Jenna and Alec are getting their hands dirty in the class learning all sorts of different instrument around CBL. The ACS project studying the sulfurization of organic matter has been steaming along and we are finishing up the third experiment in the next few weeks! Woohoo! Michael took a record 326 samples to Germany in March to analyze on the 12T FT-ICR-MS and managed to get through all of these in just one week. Now it is time to process all the data :)
January 2016
January was a busy month for the Gonsior lab! Michael has been preparing several papers for submission and will be teaching a new lab course "Analytical Techniques in Environmental Chemistry" with Laura Lapham this semester. Kaitlyn has started the second of three sulfurization experiments and the data is starting to look really interesting! Alec has be working away trying to get as much lab work done as possible before a semester of TA'ing microbiology. Jenna visited the National High Magnetic Field Lab and began analyzed a series of fracking wastewater samples. She was interviewed by the lab's PR department- check out the article!
https://nationalmaglab.org/about/around-the-lab/meet-the-users/jenna-luek
December 2015
We have an funded master's position available in our lab starting anytime between February and September 2015. This student would be using high resolution mass spectrometry to development unique organic tracers to detect leaking septic tanks. The individual would be a student through the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences (based at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland) and receive a degree in Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences http://www.mees.umd.edu/. Please email Michael if you are interested!
Alec will be attending the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco this month, and will be presenting a poster on "Tracking changes in dissolved organic matter patterns in perennial headwater streams throughout a hydrological year using in situ sensors and optical properties." Good luck Alec!
November 2015
Steve successfully defended his Ph.D, congratulations! Kaitlyn and Jenna finished up the first in a series of organic sulfurization experiments this month, and will be starting a new round of sulfurization experiments in January.
October 2015
Steve is finishing up his final experiments in the lab and has set a defense date scheduled for November 20th!
September 2015
Michael, Steve and Jenna attended the International Water Association Natural Organic Matter 6 meeting in Malmo, Sweden. Michael and other early career environmental engineers/chemists and their students received funding from the NSF to attend the meeting to develop collaborations across the group on the topic of disinfection by-products. Michael presented a plenary on "A retrospective of NOM research for water applications" and a talk on "Dissolved organic matter molecular composition changes during drinking water production- a case study of a Swedish drinking water treatment plant." The meeting was fantastic and is the start of some exciting new collaborations both in the US and internationally!
International Water Association Natural Organic Matter 6 collaborative
Left to right: Lee Blaney (UMBC), Kiran Mangalgiri (UMBC), Alex Chow (Baruch Institute), Olya Keen (University of North Carolina), Michael Gonsior (CBL), Bill Cooper (NSF/UC Irvine), Steve Timko (CBL/UC Irvine), Yan Li (Helmholtz), Nick Rogers (UMBC), Wei Li (UC Riverside), Julie Korak (UC Boulder), Jenna Luek (CBL), Julia Raeke (Helmholtz)
August 2015
Summer has been very busy in the Gonsior lab! Hope completed her NSF REU internship, completing a paper and final presentation on the "Photochemistry of Cyanobacteria-Derived Fluorescent Dissolved Organic Matter." Kaitlyn Thompson, an undergraduate at St. Mary's College of Maryland began volunteering in the lab in June and is working on extracting polar compounds for fracking waste waters. Kaitlyn and Jenna are headed out to complete the final Chesapeake Bay cruise about the R/V Hugh R. Sharp alongside PI Barbara Campbell (Clemson University) the third week of August. Michael analyzed samples at the Helmholtz Center in Munich and visited China to meet with collaborator Nianzhi Jiao to discuss future work on furthering our understanding of the dissolved organic matter of the oceans. Steve has been working with the Smithsonian Environmental Research center to studying photochemical induced changes in wetland dissolved organic matter.
Chesapeake Bay August 2015 Cruise team
Left to right: Matt Cottrell, Saeed Gholamian, Joseph Painter, Yuanchao Zhan, Najid Hussain, Jean Lim, Kaitlyn Thompson, Mike Scaboo, Jake Hilzinger, Jean Brodeur, Barbara Campbell (PI), Jenna Luek
May 2015
Undergraduate researcher Hope Ianiri has arrived at CBL for the Maryland Sea Grant NSF REU program (http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/reu). Welcome Hope!
April 2015
Jenna and Michael collected estuarine waters aboard the R/V Hugh R. Sharp to resolve changes in dissolved organic matter along a salinity gradient. This was the third of four NSF-funded cruises in the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays working alongside molecular microbial ecologist Barbara Campbell (PI, Clemson University) and her lab group. Also on board were David Marsan from UMCES-IMET (viruses), Wei-Jun Cai's lab group (inorganic carbon), and undergraduate volunteers from the University of Delaware. We will ultimately combine our dissolved organic matter with their molecular microbial data.
March 2015
Steve and Jenna presented at the ACS National meeting in Denver, CO in the Environmental Chemistry division. Steve presented a talk on "pH effects on dissolved organic matter photodegradation using semi-continuous fluorescence excitation-emission matrices" in a session on modern analytical approaches for characterizing natural organic matter. Jenna presented a talk on "Ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry of hydraulic fracturing produced waters" in a session on hydraulic fracturing impacts on water quality.
February 2015
Michael and 2014 REU Anastasia both presented at the ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Granada, Spain. Michael's talk "Dissolved organic matter variability in three different Amazon regions analyzed by ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry and EEM-PARAFAC" and Anastasia's poster "Time-resolved photochemistry of marine fluorescent dissolved organic matter" were both presented in the "Biogeochemistry of Dissolved Organic Matter" session.
November 2014
We have a PhD position to be filled in biogeochemistry if the candidate would be successful in the following fellowship:
http://www.umces.edu/education/graduate/fellowships
Deadline is 1st of December 2014
Good Luck