This year's internship program (May 31 - August 6) offered a summer research experience to 15 students who were the successful applicants from colleges and universities all over the USA. After a shared field experience at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station at Tuckerton in the first week, the students worked with individual research mentors on their own projects and presented their results to the IMCS and wider community in a poster session on August 6. In the poster contest (the judges were Judy Grassle, Carrie Ferraro, and Nir Yakoby) the winner was Jacqueline (Jack) McSweeney from Loyola Marymount University, who was mentored by John Wilkin. Her poster was titled "Profiling the Optics, Sediment, and Phytoplankton in the Delaware Bay". The runner-up was Erika Schmitt, St. Mary's College of Maryland, for her study titled "Crassostrea virginica Larval Interactions with Synthetic and Algal Particles". Erika's mentor was Heidi Fuchs. The winning poster will be presented by Jacqueline at the Aquatic Sciences Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico in February, 2011.

The RIOS program is largely supported by an REU grant from the National Science Foundation (Gary Taghon and Ken Able, Co-PIs). Thanks are due to the RIOS students and their research mentors, the two graduate student mentors (Jessica Hoffman and Julie Fliegler), and the IMCS staff in New Brunswick and Tuckerton who contributed to an exciting and fruitful summer.

You can see all posters here

RIOS photos on Flickr