Student profiles

Olivia Conrad

Olivia Conrad: An internship scoop at Gelato Fiasco

This summer, Olivia Conrad, a fourth-year student from Yarmouth, Maine, majoring in food science and human nutrition, landed a sweet internship at one of Maine’s premier gelato companies. Conrad was the food safety intern at the Gelato Fiasco Flavor Foundry in Brunswick, Maine, where pints are produced, packed and shipped nationwide. She assisted the company […]

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Lu Wang

Lu Wang: Seeing the forest for its nanocellulose

Maine is home to more than 17 million acres of forestland, making it the most heavily wooded state in the nation, and the forest products industry has long been an important part of the state’s economy. Lu Wang, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Maine School of Forest Resources housed at the Advanced Structures […]

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First-year students or trained phage hunters?

Read transcript There is a long list of learning objectives for the phage genomics course in which first-year undergraduates conduct hands-on research. Students learn how to purify and isolate novel bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacterial hosts — from soil samples. They learn how to characterize their individual phages, which can only be viewed using […]

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Savanah Haines

Savannah Haines: Passion for the forest and its health

Savannah Haines, a junior from Westport, Massachusetts, majoring in forestry with a minor in environmental horticulture, was one of three students nationwide to be awarded a Robert Felix Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship, which supports undergraduates studying arboriculture and urban forestry, is offered through the TREE Fund, a nonprofit organization committed to supporting the science of […]

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Jill Pelto

Grad student’s art featured on cover of annual climate report compiled by NOAA

Art created by University of Maine graduate student Jill Pelto is featured on the cover of an international climate report compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Pelto’s environmental artwork appears on the front and back of the State of the Climate in 2015, an international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer as a supplement […]

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Charlotte Quigley: Researching how water temperatures affect kelp growth

Read transcript Charlotte Quigley is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maine studying marine biology. Her research focuses on alaria (a type of sea vegetable) and how changing water temperatures affect its growth. By studying and testing its genetic structure, Quigley hopes to supply a sustainable, temperature tolerant crop for Maine’s aquaculture future.

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Berlynna Heres: From working with rattlesnakes to American eels

Berlynna Heres, a doctoral student in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation, is applying her passion for snakes to her new research focus at the University of Maine — the American eel. American eels, common residents in Maine’s lakes and waterways, migrate to the ocean to spawn. Occasionally the fish must navigate one of […]

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Phong Nguyen

Phong Nguyen: Changing lives is top priority

Read transcript Phong Nguyen earned a degree in chemical engineering with a concentration in pre-medical studies and a minor in chemistry from the University of Maine. The Vietnamese native hopes to one day use his passion for health care and fitness to make a difference back home. This fall, he will be pursuing a doctorate […]

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Athletics: Liz Wood maximizes the student-athlete experience

Read transcript The award-winning basketball captain and 2016 graduate with a degree in biology with a concentration in pre-medical studies has learned to live, and thrive, in the moment. Liz Wood, who earned a 3.95 GPA, scored nearly 1,500 points and pulled down more than 900 rebounds for the Black Bears. Her sights are now set […]

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Research: Shifting ecosystems in the Falkland Islands

Read transcript University of Maine researchers, including Kit Hamley, explore how extinct and introduced animals affect the Falkland Islands and seek to help farmers, sheep, tussock grass, tourists and penguins coexist in light of competing interests, sea-level rise and erosion. Hamley helped develop the 4-H Follow A ResearcherTM program at UMaine, which connects K–12 students […]

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