The Texas Sea Grant College Program at Texas A&M University has awarded $7,000 in research grants to seven undergraduate students at the main campus in College Station and Texas A&M University at Galveston (TAMUG).

The students are funded as part of the Texas Sea Grant Scholars Program, which designates scholars from among those selected for the LAUNCH: Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, whose proposal topic, from any discipline, is related to the marine environment. Recipients receive up to an additional $1,000 from the Texas Sea Grant Scholars Program to supplement their research budgets.

The goal of the program is to encourage motivated undergraduate students to participate in research and to give them the opportunity to communicate their findings as principal authors to the university’s scholarly community.

The 2020-21 Texas Sea Grant Scholars Program recipients, their respective fields of study, university and projects are listed below:

• Leah Bogan, marine biology, TAMUG, “Comparative Analysis of Fin Whale Tag Data through Machine-Based Learning”
• Santiago Canel Soria, environmental geoscience, Texas A&M, “Screening for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Sea Turtles Blood and Tissue Samples”
• Timothy Chomiak, marine sciences, TAMUG, “Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy as a Method for Studying Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) Cycling in Aquatic Systems”
• Edsel Santoni Delgado, marine biology, TAMUG, “Melanophore Response and Behavior of the Marine Isopod Sphaeroma quadridentatum in the Presence of a Common Estuarine Predator Species”
• James Scolley, marine biology, TAMUG, “Zooxanthellae Counts in Bleached Coral”
• Madeleine Thompson, marine biology, TAMUG, “Viral Activity and Its Role on Prokaryotic Communities within Anoxic Ecosystems”
• Brianne Wharton, University Studies (Oceans and One Health Concentration), TAMUG, “Constraining Dissolved Organic Matter Fluxes from the Houston/Galveston Watershed to the Gulf of Mexico”

For more information about the Texas Sea Grant Scholars Program, visit tx.ag/TXSGScholars.

By Sara Carney '13, Texas Sea Grant communications manager