NC State MEAS

A big congratulations to Ph.D. student Rachel Alcorn, who landed a major fellowship! 🔬

Alcorn earned the prestigious Johanna M. Resig Foraminiferal Research Fellowship from the Cushman Foundation For Foraminiferal Research.

This competitive fellowship provides substantial support for Alcorn's research and is considered the highest form of recognition for students working with organisms called foraminifera 👏

Alcorn’s research investigates the ocean's oxygenation during times of past and present climatic change.

Climate change is currently driving marine deoxygenation, Alcorn said. Her research allows us to better understand how the current loss of oceanic oxygen may change in the future.

Her research looks at tiny, shelled organisms in the water called foraminifera, or forams (see a large 3D-printed model of one in the last picture!). By studying the chemistry of their shells, scientists like Alcorn can reconstruct how the ocean's oxygen has changed over time.

Alcorn is specifically studying a region of the ocean in the Eastern North Pacific that has extremely low oxygen, referred to as an "oxygen minimum zone," or OMZ. These zones across the globe are expanding as the ocean loses more of its oxygen.

Alcorn uses planktic forams to see how the Eastern North Pacific OMZ has expanded or contracted throughout Earth's history, particularly during periods of warming and cooling in the past 115,000 years. Ultimately, her work helps researchers more accurately reconstruct ancient ocean conditions and identify how marine deoxygenation may change in the future.