SEAS Cruise 2007 : People
Kate Buckman - Graduate Student, WHOI/MIT Joint Program in Oceanography
- What do you do?
- I am a graduate student in the WHOI/MIT Joint Program in Biological Oceanography. I study the ecology of hydrothermal vent organisms, with a particular focus on vent fish. I am interested in how organisms interact with their environments, and how they are adapted to extreme or variable environments.
- What is your role on this cruise?
- I will be helping sort and identify macrofaunal (vent animals that can be seen without a microscope) samples as well as working with the images collected to make photomosaics (large pictures like a panorama made by piecing together a series of smaller pictures). I will also be collecting and processing samples for my thesis.
- What is your education/training?
- I have a BA in Biological Sciences from Smith College. I worked as a scientist for Sea Education Association and as a technician for Tim Shank before starting graduate school.
- What inspired you to choose your career & who were your role models?
- I have been interested in biology for as long as I can remember. In junior high school I became interested in marine environments (for no apparent reason that I can recall) and have stayed interested in them ever since. There is no individual instance or person that inspired me to become an oceanographer, but rather a number of people and experiences have fed my love of this field.
- Please describe your family:
- My parents and older brother all live in New Hampshire. My mom is a physical therapist, my father is a computer programmer and my brother owns a small construction business.
- What are some of your favorite things about life at sea?
- I enjoy all of the people that I get to meet at sea, as well as getting to visit different parts of the world.
- What do you do in your free time?
- I love to read and listen to all kinds of music. In the winter I play ice hockey and curl, and in the summer I enjoy going to the beach and to baseball games. I also enjoy spending time hiking with my dog.
