Oceanographic Center Student’s Poster Wins Awards

Abby Renegar with her winning poster.

Abby Renegar, Pat Blackwelder, Ph.D., and Husain Al Sayegh
stand in front of the Visitec Mira SEM.

Abby Renegar, Ph.D. candidate under Patricia Blackwelder, Ph.D., recently attended the Microscopy and Microanalysis Conference held Aug. 5-9 at the Broward County Convention Center. She presented an invited talk, "Microscopy and Microanalysis in Marine Invertebrate Biology," in the Technologist's Forum Symposia as well as a poster titled "Ultrastructural Analysis in the Elucidation of Disease in Corals" which won two awards:

Recent graduate Erin Hodel presented a poster from her thesis work entitled "Histopathological Assessment and Comparison of Sedimentation and Phosphate Stress in the Caribbean Staghorn Coral, Acropora cervicornis." Hodel was one of 10 students to receive the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) Presidential Scholar awards, for which she received complete registration, meals and travel expenses for the meeting, in addition to the presidential reception at the Museum of Art in Ft. Lauderdale.

Robin Sherman presented a poster by Bethany Basten, coauthored by Sherman, A. Lametschwandtner and R.E. Spieler, titled “A Unique Arterial Anastomosis Among the Efferent Epibranchial Arteries and the Dorsal Aorta in the Yellow Stingray, Urobatis jamaicensis: A Preliminary Examination.”

Featured at the meeting was the world’s largest scanning electron microscope (SEM), the Visitec Mira SEM.