URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2019_Melissa-McCarthy

Back row: URI undergraduate student Andrew White, Ph.D. student Michael Fedorenko, Ph.D. student Timo Küster. Middle row: undergraduate researcher Delaney Burke, Ph.D. student Jessica Orr, student Muzahidul Islam Anik, postdoctoral fellow Animesh Pan. Front row: Ph.D., candidate Nasim Ganji, Akram Abbasi, Ph.D., Professor Geoffrey Bothun.

As RI C-AIM’s project director and principal investigator, Bothun collaborates with groups such as URI’s Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting to create professional development opportunities for students and faculty alike, from holding workshops on conducting successful team science, to creating more inclusive research groups. Bothun is also a research co-lead for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH) URI- Harvard Superfund program STEEP: Sources, Transport, Exposure and Effects of poly-and per-fluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) that seeks to understand how PFASs have become an emerging threat to environmental and human health. Since the 1940s, PFASs have entered the environment and our bodies through exposure to common household items such as food packaging, cookware or clothing. Bothun’s group is not only developing novel research in the biomedical field, but also working to improve techniques for dispersing oil spilled through man-made disasters.

Nasim Ganji and Animesh Pan examine a solution of bacteria grown in the lab. These oil-eating bacteria thrive during marine oil spills.

Spring 2019 | 41 |