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Welcome to Dr. Adam Kustka
The department is very pleased to welcome Dr. Adam Kustka as a new Assistant Professor of Biogeochemistry. Adam joins us from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick where he was an Assistant Research Professor. Adam's research primarily involves metals and microbes, either trace metals essential for the nutrition of marine phytoplankton, or the microbially-mediated mobilization and cycling of contaminant metals. Adam joins the department as Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project investigating mechanisms of iron storage in diatoms and N2 fixing cyanobacteria.
Rutgers students return from NSF funded research on permafrost melting
and methane emissions in Alaska
Graduate students Jay Nolan and Andy Parsekian returned from spending August in a remote part of Alaska, participating in a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project on the quantification of methane emissions from thermokarst lakes. This project, led by Katey Walter (http://www.alaska.edu/uaf/cem/ine/walter/) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks seeks to improve estimates of methane emissions to the atmosphere associated with permafrost melting. Andy and Jay performed aquatic electrical resistivity imaging surveys on a number of thermokarst lakes in and effort to determine the thickness of the thaw bulb beneath these lakes and to image the distribution of methane hotspots within the lake sediments. Their research took them to a remote part of Alaska where they worked with an interdisciplinary team of scientists. Future field plans will take them to thermokarst lakes in Siberia. The picture shows Andy (far right), Jay (3rd from left), Katey Walter (center), co-PI Guido Grosse (2nd from left) and with other team members on the August 2008 trip.