Introductions

Hello All!

I am a first-year PhD student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, at the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (SFOS), in Juneau, AK. It is a complicated mouthful of a position!

I started at SFOS (pronounced "es-foss" by us insiders) last September, as part of a group of 6 students who all received funding from the National Science Foundation MESAS program (pronounced "may-sahs"). Another confusing set of acronyms go along with that whole deal, and more information can be found at: http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/mesas/

More information about us students (four years worth of funding recipients) and our research projects is at: http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/mesas/students.php

I meant to start writing about my MESAS experiences last fall, you know, when I first started the program, but of course this fell to the wayside of more pressing obligations...

So I have resolved to try to share some of my experiences with MESAS that have already gone by (like our three-week "summer course" last August, during which the program flew us all to Barrow!) and some that are just about to take place (like my required internship that begins mid-June, for which I will be sent out into the middle of the Bering Sea).

I hope that this is informative and interesting for everyone who reads it!