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Scientist Spotlight:
Scientist Spotlight:
Dr. Katie Roche, PhD
Dr. Katie Roche, PhD
College: SUNY Geneseo
Graduate school: University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography
The following information has been adapted from an interview between Kiley and Katie.
Q: What type of scientist do you consider yourself?
A: How I describe my science kind of depends on who I'm talking to. I would probably consider myself to be a marine microbial ecologist. In some circles I would say I'm a bioinformaticist. I also delve into biogeochemistry.
Q: How did you know you wanted to pursue a science education?
A: I took biology my freshman year of high school and when we learned about DNA, I was like, "This. This is what I want to do."
In college I studied biology and got a minor in math. My senior year I took an oceanography class taught by someone who came from Scripps (a very respected oceanography school) and really liked it. But beyond that I didn't have much experience in marine science.
After I graduated college I took a break and taught math and chemistry in West Africa through Peace Corps.
When I got back to the States, I was thinking about what I wanted my next steps to be and I was remembering some of the oceanographers that I had met at Geneseo. I thought their lives seemed so cool. They got to do this amazing research but they also had lives outside of work and families they could make time for.
So I did what everyone told me not to do and applied to marine biology programs. I got accepted at URI and just successfully defended my PhD thesis in September!
Q: My students and I live in Kansas, which is hundreds of miles away from any ocean. Is it possible to still do marine science while living in a place like Kansas?
A: My college didn't have a marine science major and we were hours from the coast. We had a tiny motorboat that we would take out on the lake for field work. There are lots of opportunities to get experience using sampling techniques out on freshwater lakes.
You definitely don't have to live near a coast or major in marine biology to get accepted into a marine science graduate school.
Q: Can you describe the life cycle of one single diatom?
A: Yeah, so diatoms have a frustule made of silica which is like a little glass house. When they need to make more of themselves, they can asexually reproduce by splitting into two halves. But then, every time that happens they get smaller and smaller. Then at some point when they need to be bigger than they are, so they sexually reproduce by forming sperm and egg equivalents, which fuse into one big zygote.
Q: Can diatoms die?
A: Yes. When they have limited nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, silica or trace nutrients like iron or magnesium they die and fall to the ocean floor.
They also die when they get eaten by zooplankton like dinoflagellates or radiolarians.
Some diatoms can form resting spores, which for them is kind of like hibernating. They sink out of the surface water column so that they don't get eaten by zooplankton.
Q: Now that you have finished your PhD, what's the next step for you?
A: Typically we think of three pathways you can take with a PhD. You can go into academia, so like working as a professor at a college or university and teaching classes and doing research.
Then there's the government jobs, like working for NOAA or the EPA or a similar entity.
Finally, there's the private sector or for a nonprofit. There are lots of different options in those fields; one I've looked at is the marine carbon dioxide removal industry. Phytoplankton fix half of the carbon of the entire globe, so the ocean can be a huge carbon sink. There are some cool ideas out there about how to harness this concept to help us bring down atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.
Katie has been collecting slush from the sea ice and isolating diatoms from it. This recent microscope image shows a dinoflagellate (two big darker circles) that have just eaten a diatom. The diatom is the oblong shape in the top dino. Also shown is a silicoflagellate (star shape).
Q: What do you like to do outside of work and school for fun?
A: I've recently gotten really into pottery. I've gotten back into playing volleyball lately too through a local adult league. I like to spend time outdoors and I like to pet dogs. I don't have a dog but I would love to have one once I'm more settled somewhere.
Links to Katie's research and more:
Links to Katie's research and more:
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