Archived News
September 2024: March Me really thought these updates would be more frequent, but such is life (and work!). The Stauffer Lab was busy over the summer, with two new papers out: 1) led by Ph.D. student Jen Raabe on operationalizing nutrient sensors and 2) led by lab alum Dr. Andrea Jaegge documenting microcystins in the south-central estuaries of Louisiana. Beth finally saw the HARRNESS update come to fruition (after 3+ years of collaboration with HAB experts around the country!). We also have some new lab members, including Em Mulcahy a Masters student who joins us from Virginia Tech! Oh, and the LO-SPAT fun continues, including the first hurricane impacting our water quality monitoring sites and oysters from a fully genomically selected spawn in the water!
March 2024: Times have been busier than ever, as evidenced by our last update being from 17 months ago! We have some new lab personnel supporting the GOM Nutrient Sensor Network and ongoing LO-SPAT project, while former grad student Dr. Gulce Kurtay has moved onto a fabulous postdoc at University of Washington! The LO-SPAT estuarine monitoring network is streaming real-time data, we're getting close to the first full genomically-selected oyster spawn with LO-SPAT, and we're all just hanging on (or maybe that's just me). I'll be updating the website more often this year, so check back for more exciting news.
Oct 2022: The past month has been one of the most exciting since I started this little group in 2015! The first Stauffer Lab Ph.D. student, Andrea Jaegge, successfully defended her dissertation AND had her first, first-author paper accepted into Hydrobiologia! She is wrapping up her research here at UL before moving west to start a postdoc focused on HABs with the USGS California Water Science Center. Congrats Dr. Jaegge! We have also been thinking about and working on our lab, campus, and institution. As a lab, we wrote an Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Statement that you can read on our People page. We'd love to hear your feedback on it, and we want to keep putting action to those words. After 2+ years of Beth bugging people and angrily tweeting and the Office of Campus Diversity taking charge in the past 6 months, Facilities finally installed some gender inclusive bathroom signs in academic buildings across campus. Jen has been active in pushing back against a speaker visiting campus later this month who is known for hate speech and disinformation. We are excited to keep working to improve our community in the months and years ahead.
Feb 2022: Happy Mardi Gras from Lafayette! The lab did a king cake tasting last week (spoiler alert: Keller's won!) and, after a year with no celebrations, the Fattest of Tuesdays is soon to be upon us. There are lots of other fun things happening, too! Ph.D. student Julia Sweet's paper on phytoplankton biomass and composition in 4 Louisiana estuaries is out now in Marine Pollution Bulletin! UL achieved R1 status, and the Stauffer Lab participated in a celebration of that success, sharing with the campus community and state representatives some of the cool research happening in our group. And Beth was recognized as Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor for the College of Sciences (2019-2020) and for Outstanding Achievement in Externally Funded Research (2020-2021). Let the good times roll, indeed!
Aug 2021: What a busy, crazy, awesome, and healthy summer! We hosted 13 students in the NSF-funded Healthy Streams, Healthy Coasts REU program; grad student and undergrad researchers ALL made excellent progress on their projects; got a paper accepted with new RCN-HERS colleagues on ecosystem responses to hurricanes; and kicked off the new LO-SPAT Project with colleagues. The ongoing pandemic has delayed formal announcement of the LO-SPAT project, but stay tuned on how the lab and Dr. Stauffer (Lead PI) are helping to make our Louisiana oyster populations and reefs more resilient to current and ongoing change (and we're hiring! See People page for details on open positions)
May 2021: The first (and hopefully last) full academic year in a pandemic is a wrap! Lots of great lab updates, including Ph.D. student Gulce Kurtay's paper on our NSF-Funded Hurricane Harvey research coming out in L&O! Other students are presenting at conferences, conducting oyster experiments with collaborators (see Dr. Stauffer's Twitter thread on these from April), and prepping for the upcoming Gulf of Mexico-wide GOMECC-4 cruise this Fall! Oh, and Beth was recognized as an Outstanding Masters Mentor by the UL Grad School, and is being recommended for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Happy Summer, y'all!
Jan 2021: Happy new year from the Stauffer Lab! It's been a busy few months, with lots to celebrate. Congrats to Ph.D. student Gulce Kurtay, who successfully defended her dissertation proposal this week! We are welcoming a new Masters student, Hans Prevost, back into the Stauffer Lab. Hans is a familiar face, as he conducted undergrad research with us way back when. He will likely be working on some of the ocean acidification research we are doing in collaboration with the NOAA-led GOMECC cruises. Finally, more student-led papers are getting out in the world. Former Masters student Jaylyn Babitch's paper on phytoplankton N use using a whole ecosystem isotope tracer was recently accepted at Estuaries & Coasts, and we have two other student-led papers in revision or review elsewhere. Keep up the good work, everyone!
May 2020: It has been a strange couple of months. Classes at UL Lafayette have been remote since mid-March, and the lab has been closed since the end of that month. But the Stauffer Lab persists! Beth had two papers come out recently: one tying algal blooms off the coast of California to local, high frequency physical processes and the other (led by Aaron Hogan, FIU) laying out a research framework for studying hurricane impacts on ecosystems. Beth also participated in the LUMCON Science Talks series, giving a talk on the storm- and flood-related research coming out of the lab. And one of our lab members working on the 2019 Flood project, Teri Lynn Lewis, is graduating! Teri started her research career as an REU participant in 2018 and has been a McNair Scholar in the Stauffer Lab for the past year. Teri will be moving onto a contractor position with the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, and we know she will be doing great things. Congratulations, Teri!!!
Jan 2020: It was a busy end to 2019 in the Stauffer Lab. We hosted a technical workshop to train our partners on using continuous nitrate sensors as part of an ACT project, students presented at #CERF19 and local symposia, and we recruited and welcomed a new PhD student, Julia Sweet, to work on a newly-funded Louisiana Sea Grant project testing effects of changing phytoplankton communities on oyster filtration. Beth got a paper accepted that was a veritable albatross from her dissertation, and Gulce completed the first draft of a paper on our Hurricane Harvey Research. Stay tuned for all the fun from #OSM20 and other happenings in the semester ahead!
September 2019: Holy cow, it's been a busy few months! Too busy to fully update the lab webpage, but stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, we are recruiting for one graduate student (Ph.D.-level preferred) for a summer 2020 start. More details available in this document, and get in touch with Beth directly if interested. Update: we filled this position!
April 2019: Beth and Ph.D. student Gulce Kurtay presented their Hurricane Harvey research at the ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Former M.S. student Jaylyn Babitch submitted a manuscript based on her thesis research for publication. And we welcomed a new lab member, Jen Raabe, as Research Technician working on our ACT Gulf of Mexico Nutrient Sensor Pilot Project with partners around the Gulf. Here's to another productive few months ahead!
Nov 2018: Grad students Mrun Pathare and Gulce Kurtay and Undergrad student Hans Prevost presented their research at the Gulf Estuarine Research Society (GERS) meeting in Galveston, TX. It was a great regional conference with lots of really interesting presentations by Gulf researchers!
Summer 2018: It's been a busy summer! Masters student Jaylyn Babitch defended her thesis and we hosted our first summer of the Healthy Streams, Health Coasts REU program. Two students, Tallie Foster and Rachel Humes, did their research with our lab, and nineteen students in total presented posters of their summer research at a symposium in late July!
March 2018: Our third NSF RAPID-funded cruise has left out of Galveston. Learn more on our Field Dispatches page, and tune in on Tuesday, 20 March, for a live Twitter outreach event!
Feb 2018: Dr. Stauffer and Ph.D. student Andrea Jaegge are heading back from the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland, OR where they both presented.
Jan 2018: Masters student Jaylyn Babitch and Dr. Stauffer are back out in the Gulf for our 2nd NSF-funded RAPID cruise studying the effects of Hurricane Harvey on plankton food webs. Follow along on our Field Dispatches page, on our colleague Dr. Kelly Robinson's lab page, and on Twitter!
Oct 2017: We're heading back to sea! With support from NSF RAPID, we'll be steaming west with collaborators from UL Lafayette, NC State, and Texas A&M CC to study the effects of Hurricane Harvey on GofMex plankton food webs. Follow along on our Dispatches from the Field webpage!
Oct 2017: New paper is out on Noctiluca scintillans feeding on red tide prey species. Check it out at Applied Microbial Ecology!
Dec 2017: Congrats to Masters student Mrun Pathare, who successfully defended her thesis proposal last week! Well done!!
Nov 2017: It's been a big week in the Stauffer Lab! Masters student Jaylyn Babitch successfully defended her thesis proposal. Well done, Jaylyn! And Dr. Stauffer received the "Rising Star" award from the UL Lafayette Office of Research for "showing great promise in research, scholarship, and mentorship."
Nov 2017: Dr. Stauffer is back from the first of our RAPID cruises. Catch up on the cruise blog on our Field Dispatches page. Grad students Mrun Pathare and Jaylyn Babitch are starting their week at the CERF meeting in Providence, RI. Follow along with #CERF2017 on social media!
Aug 2017: Congrats to grad students Mrun Pathare and Jaylyn Babitch for receiving travel awards to attend CERF 2017! Well done, ladies!
July 2017: It's been a busy few weeks in the Stauffer Lab. MS student Jaylyn Babitch just returned from testing fluorometers with our ACT colleague. Check out her blog post on our "Dispatches from the Field" page. PhD student Andrea Jaegge is about halfway through an intensive course in Ocean Optics at University of Maine Darling Marine Center. Finally, MS student Mrunmayee Pathare just shipped out of Key West on the R/V Ronald Brown for the GOMECC-3 cruise. Follow along on their cruise blog!
Mar 2017: M.S. student Jaylyn Babitch was one of three winners at the LA Sea Grant Coastal Connections Competition at UL Lafayette this week. All of the 3-minute talks were fantastic. Well done Jaylyn!
Mar 2017: Dr. Stauffer is interviewed by KATC about the potential local effects of defunding the NOAA Sea Grant Program, which supports research to help maintain healthy coastal communities and ecosystems in our states (incl. Louisiana!)
Nov 2016: Well done to undergrad Amber Lauchner and grad student Andrea Jaegge for their presentations at research symposia this month!
Aug 2016: The Stauffer Lab is growing!! Welcome new graduate students Andrea Jaegge (PhD), Jaylyn Babitch (MS), and Mrunmayee Pathare (MS).
Aug 2016: Following successful verification testing deployments in Chesapeake Bay, more love for the Nutrient Sensor Challenge (and related initiatives) from the White House! And a cool news post on the NOAA IOOS website.
Apr 2016: Great story in Fondriest Environmental Monitor on the Nutrient Sensor Challenge, referencing our collaborative paper out in JAWRA. We are all looking forward to the "Nutrient Sensor Boom!"
Sept 2015: Ever wonder: why plankton? Here's your answer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEP_PJXnnNs
September 2024: March Me really thought these updates would be more frequent, but such is life (and work!). The Stauffer Lab was busy over the summer, with two new papers out: 1) led by Ph.D. student Jen Raabe on operationalizing nutrient sensors and 2) led by lab alum Dr. Andrea Jaegge documenting microcystins in the south-central estuaries of Louisiana. Beth finally saw the HARRNESS update come to fruition (after 3+ years of collaboration with HAB experts around the country!). We also have some new lab members, including Em Mulcahy a Masters student who joins us from Virginia Tech! Oh, and the LO-SPAT fun continues, including the first hurricane impacting our water quality monitoring sites and oysters from a fully genomically selected spawn in the water!
March 2024: Times have been busier than ever, as evidenced by our last update being from 17 months ago! We have some new lab personnel supporting the GOM Nutrient Sensor Network and ongoing LO-SPAT project, while former grad student Dr. Gulce Kurtay has moved onto a fabulous postdoc at University of Washington! The LO-SPAT estuarine monitoring network is streaming real-time data, we're getting close to the first full genomically-selected oyster spawn with LO-SPAT, and we're all just hanging on (or maybe that's just me). I'll be updating the website more often this year, so check back for more exciting news.
Oct 2022: The past month has been one of the most exciting since I started this little group in 2015! The first Stauffer Lab Ph.D. student, Andrea Jaegge, successfully defended her dissertation AND had her first, first-author paper accepted into Hydrobiologia! She is wrapping up her research here at UL before moving west to start a postdoc focused on HABs with the USGS California Water Science Center. Congrats Dr. Jaegge! We have also been thinking about and working on our lab, campus, and institution. As a lab, we wrote an Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Statement that you can read on our People page. We'd love to hear your feedback on it, and we want to keep putting action to those words. After 2+ years of Beth bugging people and angrily tweeting and the Office of Campus Diversity taking charge in the past 6 months, Facilities finally installed some gender inclusive bathroom signs in academic buildings across campus. Jen has been active in pushing back against a speaker visiting campus later this month who is known for hate speech and disinformation. We are excited to keep working to improve our community in the months and years ahead.
Feb 2022: Happy Mardi Gras from Lafayette! The lab did a king cake tasting last week (spoiler alert: Keller's won!) and, after a year with no celebrations, the Fattest of Tuesdays is soon to be upon us. There are lots of other fun things happening, too! Ph.D. student Julia Sweet's paper on phytoplankton biomass and composition in 4 Louisiana estuaries is out now in Marine Pollution Bulletin! UL achieved R1 status, and the Stauffer Lab participated in a celebration of that success, sharing with the campus community and state representatives some of the cool research happening in our group. And Beth was recognized as Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor for the College of Sciences (2019-2020) and for Outstanding Achievement in Externally Funded Research (2020-2021). Let the good times roll, indeed!
Aug 2021: What a busy, crazy, awesome, and healthy summer! We hosted 13 students in the NSF-funded Healthy Streams, Healthy Coasts REU program; grad student and undergrad researchers ALL made excellent progress on their projects; got a paper accepted with new RCN-HERS colleagues on ecosystem responses to hurricanes; and kicked off the new LO-SPAT Project with colleagues. The ongoing pandemic has delayed formal announcement of the LO-SPAT project, but stay tuned on how the lab and Dr. Stauffer (Lead PI) are helping to make our Louisiana oyster populations and reefs more resilient to current and ongoing change (and we're hiring! See People page for details on open positions)
May 2021: The first (and hopefully last) full academic year in a pandemic is a wrap! Lots of great lab updates, including Ph.D. student Gulce Kurtay's paper on our NSF-Funded Hurricane Harvey research coming out in L&O! Other students are presenting at conferences, conducting oyster experiments with collaborators (see Dr. Stauffer's Twitter thread on these from April), and prepping for the upcoming Gulf of Mexico-wide GOMECC-4 cruise this Fall! Oh, and Beth was recognized as an Outstanding Masters Mentor by the UL Grad School, and is being recommended for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Happy Summer, y'all!
Jan 2021: Happy new year from the Stauffer Lab! It's been a busy few months, with lots to celebrate. Congrats to Ph.D. student Gulce Kurtay, who successfully defended her dissertation proposal this week! We are welcoming a new Masters student, Hans Prevost, back into the Stauffer Lab. Hans is a familiar face, as he conducted undergrad research with us way back when. He will likely be working on some of the ocean acidification research we are doing in collaboration with the NOAA-led GOMECC cruises. Finally, more student-led papers are getting out in the world. Former Masters student Jaylyn Babitch's paper on phytoplankton N use using a whole ecosystem isotope tracer was recently accepted at Estuaries & Coasts, and we have two other student-led papers in revision or review elsewhere. Keep up the good work, everyone!
May 2020: It has been a strange couple of months. Classes at UL Lafayette have been remote since mid-March, and the lab has been closed since the end of that month. But the Stauffer Lab persists! Beth had two papers come out recently: one tying algal blooms off the coast of California to local, high frequency physical processes and the other (led by Aaron Hogan, FIU) laying out a research framework for studying hurricane impacts on ecosystems. Beth also participated in the LUMCON Science Talks series, giving a talk on the storm- and flood-related research coming out of the lab. And one of our lab members working on the 2019 Flood project, Teri Lynn Lewis, is graduating! Teri started her research career as an REU participant in 2018 and has been a McNair Scholar in the Stauffer Lab for the past year. Teri will be moving onto a contractor position with the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, and we know she will be doing great things. Congratulations, Teri!!!
Jan 2020: It was a busy end to 2019 in the Stauffer Lab. We hosted a technical workshop to train our partners on using continuous nitrate sensors as part of an ACT project, students presented at #CERF19 and local symposia, and we recruited and welcomed a new PhD student, Julia Sweet, to work on a newly-funded Louisiana Sea Grant project testing effects of changing phytoplankton communities on oyster filtration. Beth got a paper accepted that was a veritable albatross from her dissertation, and Gulce completed the first draft of a paper on our Hurricane Harvey Research. Stay tuned for all the fun from #OSM20 and other happenings in the semester ahead!
September 2019: Holy cow, it's been a busy few months! Too busy to fully update the lab webpage, but stay tuned for more details. In the meantime, we are recruiting for one graduate student (Ph.D.-level preferred) for a summer 2020 start. More details available in this document, and get in touch with Beth directly if interested. Update: we filled this position!
April 2019: Beth and Ph.D. student Gulce Kurtay presented their Hurricane Harvey research at the ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Former M.S. student Jaylyn Babitch submitted a manuscript based on her thesis research for publication. And we welcomed a new lab member, Jen Raabe, as Research Technician working on our ACT Gulf of Mexico Nutrient Sensor Pilot Project with partners around the Gulf. Here's to another productive few months ahead!
Nov 2018: Grad students Mrun Pathare and Gulce Kurtay and Undergrad student Hans Prevost presented their research at the Gulf Estuarine Research Society (GERS) meeting in Galveston, TX. It was a great regional conference with lots of really interesting presentations by Gulf researchers!
Summer 2018: It's been a busy summer! Masters student Jaylyn Babitch defended her thesis and we hosted our first summer of the Healthy Streams, Health Coasts REU program. Two students, Tallie Foster and Rachel Humes, did their research with our lab, and nineteen students in total presented posters of their summer research at a symposium in late July!
March 2018: Our third NSF RAPID-funded cruise has left out of Galveston. Learn more on our Field Dispatches page, and tune in on Tuesday, 20 March, for a live Twitter outreach event!
Feb 2018: Dr. Stauffer and Ph.D. student Andrea Jaegge are heading back from the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland, OR where they both presented.
Jan 2018: Masters student Jaylyn Babitch and Dr. Stauffer are back out in the Gulf for our 2nd NSF-funded RAPID cruise studying the effects of Hurricane Harvey on plankton food webs. Follow along on our Field Dispatches page, on our colleague Dr. Kelly Robinson's lab page, and on Twitter!
Oct 2017: We're heading back to sea! With support from NSF RAPID, we'll be steaming west with collaborators from UL Lafayette, NC State, and Texas A&M CC to study the effects of Hurricane Harvey on GofMex plankton food webs. Follow along on our Dispatches from the Field webpage!
Oct 2017: New paper is out on Noctiluca scintillans feeding on red tide prey species. Check it out at Applied Microbial Ecology!
Dec 2017: Congrats to Masters student Mrun Pathare, who successfully defended her thesis proposal last week! Well done!!
Nov 2017: It's been a big week in the Stauffer Lab! Masters student Jaylyn Babitch successfully defended her thesis proposal. Well done, Jaylyn! And Dr. Stauffer received the "Rising Star" award from the UL Lafayette Office of Research for "showing great promise in research, scholarship, and mentorship."
Nov 2017: Dr. Stauffer is back from the first of our RAPID cruises. Catch up on the cruise blog on our Field Dispatches page. Grad students Mrun Pathare and Jaylyn Babitch are starting their week at the CERF meeting in Providence, RI. Follow along with #CERF2017 on social media!
Aug 2017: Congrats to grad students Mrun Pathare and Jaylyn Babitch for receiving travel awards to attend CERF 2017! Well done, ladies!
July 2017: It's been a busy few weeks in the Stauffer Lab. MS student Jaylyn Babitch just returned from testing fluorometers with our ACT colleague. Check out her blog post on our "Dispatches from the Field" page. PhD student Andrea Jaegge is about halfway through an intensive course in Ocean Optics at University of Maine Darling Marine Center. Finally, MS student Mrunmayee Pathare just shipped out of Key West on the R/V Ronald Brown for the GOMECC-3 cruise. Follow along on their cruise blog!
Mar 2017: M.S. student Jaylyn Babitch was one of three winners at the LA Sea Grant Coastal Connections Competition at UL Lafayette this week. All of the 3-minute talks were fantastic. Well done Jaylyn!
Mar 2017: Dr. Stauffer is interviewed by KATC about the potential local effects of defunding the NOAA Sea Grant Program, which supports research to help maintain healthy coastal communities and ecosystems in our states (incl. Louisiana!)
Nov 2016: Well done to undergrad Amber Lauchner and grad student Andrea Jaegge for their presentations at research symposia this month!
Aug 2016: The Stauffer Lab is growing!! Welcome new graduate students Andrea Jaegge (PhD), Jaylyn Babitch (MS), and Mrunmayee Pathare (MS).
Aug 2016: Following successful verification testing deployments in Chesapeake Bay, more love for the Nutrient Sensor Challenge (and related initiatives) from the White House! And a cool news post on the NOAA IOOS website.
Apr 2016: Great story in Fondriest Environmental Monitor on the Nutrient Sensor Challenge, referencing our collaborative paper out in JAWRA. We are all looking forward to the "Nutrient Sensor Boom!"
Sept 2015: Ever wonder: why plankton? Here's your answer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEP_PJXnnNs
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