Stanley wins President’s Award at 60th annual Northeast Algal Society meeting
Alexis Stanley, undergraduate laboratory assistant at the University of Maine from Plattsmouth, Nebraska, was awarded the President’s Award at the 60th annual Northeast Algal Society (NEAS) meeting in Burlington, Vermont.
NEAS is a regional phycological society dedicated to furthering algal research and education in the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada. The President’s Award is presented for the poster or talk judged to be the best presentation by an undergraduate student at the annual Northeast Algal Symposium. Emphasis is placed on the clarity of the presentation, the student’s participation in the research and their ability to speak about the work during the poster session.
Stanley is an assistant in School of Marine Sciences professor Susan Brawley’s lab researching Porphyra umbilicalis and its ability to be a model system for the lab and aquaculture applications. Stanley’s winning poster presentation was titled “Developing Porphyra umbilicalis as an Easy-to-Use Model System” and detailed her work mimicking the environmental and tidal conditions of the northwest Atlantic Ocean coast in order to see if the neutral spores of Porphyra umbilicalis could be produced at a high enough abundance to support the species as a model system, which would make it more accessible for research.
The research was supported by a National Science Foundation-funded subcontract to Brawley and Joshua Kelley, assistant professor of biochemistry in the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences.
“It was an honor to receive this award, and a joyous experience to be able to share my work and be met with such enthusiasm. I’m very thankful for all the people who helped me with my research and continue to do so,” Stanley says.
Stanley will graduate from the University of Maine in May 2022 with a Bachelor of Science in Marine Sciences.