Our latest student feature highlighting the use of the FINS award is with Arial Brewer, PhD student in the Berdahl and Van Cise labs.
With the FINS award, I was able to use it for two different purposes – one involving presenting my research at a conference, and the other conducting fieldwork in Alaska.

In Spring 2023, I traveled to Olympia, WA and presented my research at The Wildlife Society conference in Olympia. 

We spoke with PhD student Helena McMonagle about her use of the FINS award to facilitate travel to a conference in Norway, where she presented her research abroad  for the first time.

Why was this conference useful for you to attend?

The Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Ocean (ECCWO) is a conference that now takes place every few years in a different country. 

Now in its 12th year of being held at SAFS, a workshop led by graduate students to support applicants for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is celebrating the successful award to five students this year.
The NSF GRFP aims to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the US and broaden participation in science and engineering of underrepresented groups. 

In the Arctic, where temperatures are rising at nearly four times the global average, a collaborative effort, combining Indigenous Knowledge with multidisciplinary science has been used to investigate the denning habitat selection of Alaska’s ringed seals.
During the Ikaaġvik Sikukun (Iñupiaq for “Ice Bridges”) project, researchers from the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Native Village of Kotzebue, NOAA, and Farthest North Films collaborated with an Elder Advisory Council of Iñupiaq Qikiqtaġruŋmiut Elders with extensive personal history of subsistence hunting and experience on sea ice. 

Ever wondered how money raised from the sale of FINS merchandise gets used? Look no further—here are some recent stories from SAFS students who have directly benefited from funds raised by the Fisheries Interdisciplinary Network of Students (FINS), housed at the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
 One of the best ways for graduate students to present their research to an extensive, global audience and interact with national and international colleagues is to attend conferences relevant to their field of study.  

The 33rd Annual Graduate Student Symposium (GSS) will be held on Friday, November 18th, 2022, from 9am to 5pm in FSH 107, with a poster session and reception beginning at 5pm in the FSH lobby. This event is a wonderful opportunity for SAFS graduate students to share their current, past, or proposed research and get feedback from other students, faculty, and scientists. 

Washington Sea Grant announces that Ashley Townes, who is completing her doctorate in fisheries ecology at SAFS, has been selected as the 2022–2023 WSG Keystone Fellow. 

Graduates, friends, family and other members of the UW community are warmly invited to the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences 2022 Graduation Celebration on Friday, June 10, 2022.

Join us for the 2022 UW Aquatic Sciences Open House hosted by SEAS this Saturday (May 21st) from 10 AM to 4 PM in FSH. We hope to see you all there!

Graduate student Jessie Hale released a paper rethinking the status, trends, and equilibrium abundance estimates of Washington State’s sea otter population and Ruth Drinkwater’s (BS 2021) capstone project, “Estimating proportions of identical twins and twin survival rates in cetaceans using fetal data,” was published in Marine Mammal Science.