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Monica Bittner Marcelli

Lab and Research Specialist, Greenhouse Manager

After moving to the U.S. from her native Chile in the late eighties, Monica Bittner Marcelli graduated from the University of Maryland in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agronomy and then again in 1995 with a Master of Science Degree also in Agronomy. She held various Teaching and Research Assistant positions during her time at Maryland for both the Botany and the Agronomy departments Monica has taught Botany, Weed Science, Geology at the University of Chile and University of Maryland. After graduating, she worked for 4 years at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy as a Research Associate.

She has contributed to over nine academic publications and has-authored several coloring books aimed to provide children and parents with education in pesticide safety, biological control, invasive weeds, monarch butterfly, turtles, and pollinators, Responsible and limited pesticide use is an issue for which Monica has a lot of passion.

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R. Chris Jones, Ph.D.

Professor & Director, Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center

Dr. R. Chris Jones is the Director of the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center (PEREC). He is a freshwater ecologist whose research foci include tidal freshwater ecosystems (emphasizing plankton and macrophytes), stream ecology (emphasizing benthic macroinvertebrates), and watershed management. Dr. Jones teaches courses in waterscape ecology, freshwater ecology, and multivariate analysis. He has been a faculty member at Mason since 1980.

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Robert Jonas, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department Chair

Dr. Jonas is a microbial ecologist and ecotoxicologist. His research focuses mainly on estuarine and oceanic systems. Currently he has research projects investigating the interactions of nutrient enrichment, phytoplankton production and bacterioplankton proliferation in the Chesapeake Bay and adjacent tributaries. He is also working on microbiological aspects of diseases of reef building corals. This work includes sampling diseased and healthy control corals from tropical waters of The Bahamas, the US Virgin Islands and the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. Experimentally, these projects use culture-dependent and molecular techniques to investigate bacterial diversity in these stressed communities. He teaches courses in environmental microbiology, microbial ecology, environmental toxicology and general environmental science and policy at the graduate level, and microbiology and studies of the environment at the undergraduate level. Along with Dr. Esther Peters, he teaches an off-campus course through Mote Marine Laboratory on diseases of corals.

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Leila Hamdan

Associate Professor

Dr. Leila J. Hamdan is a molecular microbial ecologist and her studies focus on geomicrobiology and the impact of changing environmental conditions on the structure and function of marine and estuarine communities. Her current studies center on microbial biogeography on continental margins and the impacts of hydrocarbons and chemical dispersants on communities found on artificial reefs (shipwrecks) in the deep biosphere of the Gulf of Mexico. Her work also addresses the microbiology of marine methane seeps and the role of microorganisms in the development of anoxia in the Chesapeake Bay. Prior to joining the Department, Dr. Hamdan was as a Research Microbiologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and a National Research Council Post Doctoral Research Associate.

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Kim de Mutsert, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Faculty Fellow, Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center

Dr. Kim de Mutsert’s research interests include fish ecology in the marine, estuarine and freshwater environment. She is especially interested in the effects of environmental and anthropogenic stressors on nekton community structure and food web dynamics. Current projects include modeling the response of living marine resources to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, studying effects of freshwater diversion on nekton communities in Louisiana estuaries, and monitoring the long-term recovery from eutrophication of a tidal freshwater ecosystem (Gunston Cove) in Virginia. She teaches courses in freshwater ecology, limnology, estuarine ecology, and fish ecology. She is a faculty fellow at the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center.

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Talia Buford

Environment and Labor Reporter, The Center for Public Integrity

Talia Buford is a reporter in the Center’s environment and labor team. She spent three years as an energy reporter for Politico, where she covered natural gas and the Interior Department and authored the daily Afternoon Energy newsletter. Previously, Buford spent five years at The Providence (R.I.) Journal as a legal affairs and municipal reporter. She earned a master’s degree in the study of law from Georgetown University Law Center and studied print journalism at Hampton University. Her work has been recognized by the Rhode Island Press Association, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Foundation.

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Dr. Changwoo Ahn

Professor

Dr. Changwoo Ahn’s general research interests and experiences include ecological functions of created wetlands, wetland system ecology, water quality, wetland creation and restoration, nutrient dynamics (N, P), and ecological modeling. Currently his Wetland Ecosystem Laboratory at GMU has three main topics of study: wetland creation/restoration techniques (i.e., microtopography relations), ecological monitoring of mitigation wetlands, and microbial community patterns along biogeochemical gradients in constructed wetlands.

Through his postdoctoral work at the Illinois Water Resources Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Ahn focused on developing a dynamic model to predict vegetation responses to many different scenarios of river hydrology being manipulated for the restoration of Illinois floodplain-river ecosystem. Through this project, Dr. Ahn worked with a number of stakeholders, including The Nature Conservancy and National Science Foundation.

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Alonso Aguirre, PhD, DMV

Associate Professor

Dr. Alonso Aguirre heads a program of collaborative research that focuses on the ecology of wildlife disease and the links to human health and conservation of biodiversity. His research has been instrumental in revealing the impact of emerging diseases of marine wildlife populations. Dr. Aguirre’s international experience brings applied solutions to ecological health issues accomplished through trans-disciplinary teams, innovative research, scientific excellence, and long-term monitoring of sentinel species. Dr. Aguirre served as the Executive Director of the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation and Director of the Mason Center for Conservation Studies.

He has authored three books, published over 160 professional papers, monographs and scientific reports, and advised government agency and NGO leaders of several countries in the Americas, Southeast Asia and Western Europe. He currently serves as co-editor of EcoHealth, Journal of Wildlife Diseases and European Journal of Wildlife Research.