Featured Research Archives
March 2012
Dr. Danielle de Jong is a new post-doctoral research fellow at Kewalo Marine Lab, working with Dr. Elaine Seaver. Dr. de Jong completed her Ph.D. on nervous system patterning genes in the coral Acropora millepora with Dr. David Miller at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Following an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Dr. Bernd Schierwater working on the basal metazoan Tricoplax adhaerens, Dr. de Jong has joined the Seaver Lab to study mechanisms of regeneration using the polychaete annelid Capitella teleta. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how this marine worm regenerates its segments following amputation.
Read more about Dr. de Jong's research...
January 2012
Mr. James Murphy is an undergraduate researcher in the Richmond Lab. From a very young age, science in general has been his passion – from volunteering with local sustainability programs to spending hours studying roller coaster physics to shadowing pharmacists and surgeons. As early as elementary school, he was spending his time reading science magazines, participating in science fairs, and taking trips to the Liberty Science Center and tide pools along the shores of New Jersey. It wasn't until high school that he began to focus his interests towards marine biology and biochemistry.
Read more about Mr. Murphy's research...
October 2011
Dr. Michael Layden's interest in biology dates back all the way to his days in high school.
"I remember being really fascinated thinking about how multi-cellularity might have evolved. But as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, I studied glycosyltransferase enzyme biology in the nematode worm, C. elegans," recalls Dr. Layden.
After graduation, Dr. Layden continued to work in the nematode lab as a laboratory technician, but found that the repetitive scut work of molecular cloning was not very fulfilling, and decided to pursue his graduate studies.
"I went to the University of Oregon for graduate school, where I studied in Chris Doe's lab investigating Drosophila (fruit fly) motor neuron development," explains Dr. Layden. "There I learned how to use genetic approaches to ask questions about gene function during animal development. Through interactions with other faculty members there, my interest in evolution surfaced again."
Read more about Dr. Layden's research...
August 2011
Dr. Ying Huang has come quite a way from her early beginnings in marine biology – from a curious child in Xiamen, China to a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Hawai'i. "I grew up right near the coast in southeastern China and was always fascinated by the different creatures in the ocean", recounts Dr. Huang. "It was because of this curiosity that I chose to study marine biology as my major in college."
After moving to Hawai'i to attend graduate school, Dr. Huang had to learn English through intensive study in order to take upper level classes at UH, serve as a teaching assistant in undergraduate biology classes, and read the primary literature in her field. She also had to learn cell and molecular biology and bacterial genetics in order to successfully complete her dissertation research.
Read more about Dr. Huang's research...
July 2011
Ms. Emi Yamaguchi's fascination with marine biology began at an early age, with dreams of becoming a marine biologist and working with dolphins. It wasn't until her time as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California that she realized there was so much more to marine biology. While spending a semester at the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Santa Catalina Island, she was exposed to the enormous diversity of marine invertebrate animals and decided she wanted to seriously pursue science for her degree. Back on the main campus, Ms. Yamaguchi worked on a project comparing the larval physiology of temperate versus polar echinoderms, which was how she "fell in love with marine invertebrate larvae" and decided to study developmental biology and begin her graduate degree at the University of Hawaii.
Read more about Ms. Yamaguchi's research...
June 2011
Dr. Yimnang Golbuu's involvement in coral reef ecology, education, and conservation is impressive, to say the least. His professional experience includes serving on the Palau National Commission of UNESCO, chairing the Northern Reef Management Planning Team of Palau, serving as board member of the Palau Conservation Society, acting as program leader for the Natural Resource and Environmental Education Division at Palau Community College-Cooperative Research and Extension, and working as the chief researcher and CEO at the Palau International Coral Reef Center. His work on coral reefs has not been limited to Palau, as he has conducted research projects on coral reefs throughout Micronesia, including Yap, Guam, and Pohnpei.
Read more about Dr. Golbuu's research...
March 2011
Although Dr. Yale Passamaneck, a post-doctoral research fellow working with Dr. Martindale at Kewalo Marine Laboratory, has had a life-long interest in the ocean and the animals that live in it, he didn't grow up dreaming of working on microscopic marine larvae. While growing up in San Francisco, he naturally enjoyed the ocean and its inhabitants -- spending much of his free time exploring tidepools and stalking the latest deliveries of pet store aquariums -- but did not give much thought to what wasn't readily seen with the naked eye. As an undergraduate at University of California Santa Cruz, Dr. Passamaneck focused on flashier fare by training sea lions and dolphins, and performing research SCUBA diving throughout California and in the Aleutian Islands.
Read more about Dr. Passamaneck's research...
February 2011
Dr. Aldine Amiel is an EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) Postdoctoral Fellow working with the Seaver Group at Kewalo Marine Lab. She is also one of three co-founders of the non-profit organization Kahi Kai, a group committed to promoting communication and interaction among students, scientists, and anyone interested in the endangered marine world.
"I am interested in understanding, at the cellular and molecular levels, the evolution of the diversity of animal forms seen within the metazoans", says Dr. Amiel. "This field of evolutionary developmental biology, or EvoDevo, combines two major biology fields important for our understanding of the origin of animal biodiversity and how the complex biological processes at the origin of the embryonic development appear and evolved during animal Evolution."
Read more about Dr. Amiel's research...
December 2010
Dr. Kevin Pang is interested in early animal evolution. His recently completed doctoral dissertation research focused on the biology and genomics of ctenophores as one of the important animal groups for studying early metazoan evolution.
"The ctenophores, also called comb jellies, are a group of marine animals that are really important for understanding animal evolution. Their unique features and position near the base of the metazoan tree of life make them an ideal group for studying what was going on during the early evolution of metazoans."
Read more about Dr. Pang's research...
November 2010
Coral reef conservation is a subject about which graduate student Jonathan Martinez is passionate.
As a PhD candidate in the UH Botany Department under Dr. Celia Smith, Jonathan collaborates with the Richmond Lab here at Kewalo investigating all aspects of coral reef conservation, including reproductive biology and recruitment ecology, coral spawning and fertilization dynamics, water quality monitoring, ecotoxicology, marine algal ecology and biochemistry, as well as different aspects of coral physiology.
Read more about Jonathan's research...
October 2010
Dr. Liz Perotti is a post-doctoral researcher in Dr. Michael Hadfield's lab here at Kewalo. Her work focuses on the mechanisms by which larvae of marine invertebrates recruit to their adult habitats to further understand the basis of community structure and ecology.
While a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Perotti became interested in questions about how geology and geologic history affect the ecology and evolution of marine communities.
Read more about Dr. Perotti's research...
September 2010
Dr. Néva Meyer started her research career in cancer biology while an undergraduate at Purdue University, but as a graduate student at the University of Washington, rotations through different research labs led her towards an interest in nervous system development. Her doctoral research focused the role of the Gli3 gene in dorsovental fate specification of neurons in the chick spinal cord. As a post-doctoral research fellow in Dr. Seaver's lab at Kewalo Marine Lab, she has become interested in the broader question of how centralized nervous systems (CNS) evolved.
