Graduate Students Earn Coastal Conference Poster Honors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
John Fear, 919-515-9104, jmfear@ncsu.edu
E-Ching Lee, 919-515-9098, eching_lee@ncsu.edu

Five students won awards for presenting their research at North Carolina’s Coastal Conference, hosted by North Carolina Sea Grant in Raleigh.

They were selected based on poster content and design, as well as how well they explained their research, and the implications and relevance of the work.

“We had an excellent poster session. We received submissions from a diverse group of students, many of whom we had not interacted with previously,” says John Fear, Sea Grant deputy director. “The winners exemplified the great body of ongoing research across the University of North Carolina system.”

The winners were:

• First place: Verena Wang, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Estimating Southern Flounder Population Connectivity Using Otolith Geochemistry.
• Second place: Liliana Velasquez Montoya, NC State University, Oregon Inlet: Can We Solve the Unresolved Morphological Puzzle?
• Third place: Shilo Fenton, NC State University, Managing American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliates) Population Growth by Targeting Breeding Season Vital Rates.
• Honorable mention: Deborah Lichti, East Carolina University, Are All Rivers Created Equal? Determining How Food Web Dynamics Affect Fish Nursery Habitat.
• Honorable mention: Seth Theuerkauf, NC State University, Density-Dependent Role of an Invasive Marsh Grass, Phragmites australis, on Ecosystem Service Provision.

Students had the opportunity to discuss their research with a spectrum of researchers, representatives from state and federal agencies, leaders from coastal industries and communities, and their peers from across the state.

Poster topics addressed the conference focus areas: weather, storms and climate, community and ecosystem health, fisheries and aquaculture, and planning and economics.

For a full listing of the 28 students who submitted poster abstracts, go to ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/nc-coastal-conference/2017posters.

North Carolina Sea Grant is currently requesting feedback from conference participants. If you attended the meeting and did not receive an email about our survey, please contact Jack Thigpen, Sea Grant extension director, at jack_thigpen@ncsu.edu.

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