Paul Rawson

Paul Rawson is a professor in the School of Marine Sciences research program investigating bivalve ecological and physiological genetics. He has nearly 25 years of experience conducting research in support of Maine’s growing shellfish aquaculture industry. This research has been sustained using funding from a diversity of state and federal agencies including the USDA, NOAA, and NSF. Some recent highlights of Paul’s research include “From sequence to consequence: genomic selection to expand and improve selective breeding for the Eastern oyster” a grant supporting research by the East Coast Shellfish Breeding Consortium, of which Paul is a founding member. This project seeks to move oyster breeding from inefficient mass selection approaches to state-of-the-art genomic-based breeding. Another project, “Identifying Seed Source Populations Supporting the Culture of Atlantic Sea Scallops in Coastal Maine” is using a combination of computer modeling and next-generation sequencing methods (NGS) to identify sources of scallop larvae critical to the fledgling scallop aquaculture industry. Other ongoing or past projects have investigated the development of hatchery and nursery technologies for the production of razor clam and mussel seed and approaches to reduce the impact of burrowing polychaetes (blister worms) on oyster culture.