RESEARCHER BIOS
Brian Cousin •
Tamara Frank, Ph.D. •
Erika Heine
Justin Marshall, Ph.D.. •
Mikhail Matz, Ph.D. •
Charles H. Mazel, Ph.D.
Nicole McMullen •
Mark Schrope •
Edith A. Widder, Ph.D.
Brian Cousin •
cousin@hboi.edu
Video Production Specialist
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Since 1993, Brian Cousin has been Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution's video
production specialist. He has documented leading-edge scientific research and development
at the institution and on various missions to the Bahamas, the Galapagos archipelago,
the Gulf of Maine and Mexico. While his name is rarely seen in the credits, Brian's video
footage has been included in television documentaries produced around the world.
In addition, Brian has produced award winning video programming for Harbor Branch,
including a 26-minute program entitled "Marine Bioluminescence: Secret Lights in the Sea".
Produced in collaboration with Harbor Branch's Dr. Edith Widder, the video provides an
excellent background on the phenomenon of marine bioluminescence, and features previously
unseen footage captured by Dr. Widder and her colleagues across the country. Brian is a
certified Harbor Branch scuba diver and a member of the American Academy of Underwater
Sciences. His diving experience ranges from cave-diving - perhaps the ultimate in
confined-space diving - to blue water diving - essentially open-ocean diving in a referenceless
enviornment, often likened to space walking. On this mission Brian will be the at-sea web
coordinator and videographer providing still and video images to the NOAA OE web site.
Tamara Frank, Ph.D. •
frank@hboi.edu
Co-Principal Investigator, Chief Scientist
Visual Ecology Research - Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Frank is currently the head of the Visual Ecology Department in the division of
Marine Science at HBOI. She is studying how downwelling light controls the behavior
and distribution patterns of midwater animals during the day as well as how it triggers
their vertical migrations at night. Her work combines in situ studies from the Johnson-Sea-Link
submersible to quantify animal distribution patterns with shipboard based laboratory studies
on the photosensitivity of animals brought up with midwater trawl nets. She is particularly
interested in the adaptations of animal eyes to dim light environments, and on this expedition,
will be working on benthic crustaceans retrieved from depths of up to 700 m. She has
participated in over 70 research cruises, both as chief scientist and lucky hitchhiker,
conducting work in the Gulf of Maine, and off the coasts of the Bahamas, Cuba, California,
Hawaii and the Canary Islands. Her educational background includes a B.A. from California
State University, Long Beach, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from University of California,
Santa Barbara, and post-doctoral fellowships from the University of Connecticut Medical
School, Hatfield Marine Science Center in Oregon, and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.
Erika Heine •
eheine@hboi.edu
Graduate Student
Johns Hopkins University/ Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Currently Erika is pursuing a doctorate degree in Oceanography at Johns Hopkins University.
She bases her research out of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution under the guidance of
Dr. Edith Widder. Erika is primarily interested in the spatial and temporal distribution of
coastal bioluminescence and plans to take a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the
mechanisms for creating and maintaining bioluminescent communities. Erika worked at Hopkins
Marine Station researching the population genetics of threatened salmonid populations in
California after completing her BS in Biology from California Polytechnic State University
(Cal Poly) at San Luis Obispo. She retuned to Cal Poly for her MS in biology, completing her
thesis on phytoplankton communities and costal bioluminescence. During this time, she
participated in collaborative efforts at Rutgers Marine Station and MBARI. This summer Erika
is researching the relationship between bioluminescent flash kinetics in dinoflagellates and
their toxicity. On the cruise Erika will be assisting with the studies of benthic bioluminescence,
as well as collecting potentially bioluminescent and toxic species of dinoflagellates for
testing and culturing.
Justin Marshall, Ph.D.
Marine Biologist, Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre
QBI, University of Queensland, Australia
Justin Marshall has been a marine biologist from the age of 2. His interest in the sea came from following father
and mother to different countries and oceans as they researched the deep-sea and the animals living there. After
this early career decision he studied zoology at St. Andrews University in Scotland and then went on to specialize
in sensory neurobiology of marine animals during his doctorate at Sussex University in England. He has one principle
aim in his research, to understand how other animals perceive their environment. As humans we tend to assume we
are the pinnacle of evolution, however, certainly in sensory terms this is far from true. By taking an approach to
sensory systems which is based around ecology but also includes physiology, anatomy, behaviour and neural integration,
the signals that animals use and their intention are slowly being revealed. One of the animal groups he has worked on
extensively are the stomatopods (mantis shrimps), reef-dwelling crustaceans with the world's most complex color
vision system. These lowly crustaceans possess 4 times as many colour receptors as humans, 4 of which sample the
UV, a region of the spectrum to which we are blind. A major component of his work at present is studying the way in
which UV and polarization (another feature of light to which humans are blind) are used in animal communication.
Mikhail Matz, Ph.D.
Assistant Scientist
Whitney Laboratory, University of Florida
In 2001 Mikhail Matz became a faculty member of the Whitney Laboratory, University of Florida.
He received his BA and MS in molecular biology from Moscow State University, Russia, and
has been trained as a top-level gene hunter during his graduate program and subsequent work as
research scientist at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russia. His research
(which he defines as "molecular oceanography") involves screening various marine organisms
for genes and proteins that could become potential tools and/or models for basic biomedical
and marine biology studies, and pursuing the most promising of the new directions that arise
as a result. His current project (funded by NIH) is cloning and characterization of fluorescent
proteins homologous to the green fluorescent protein (GFP).
Charles H. Mazel, Ph.D.
Principal Research Scientist
Physical Sciences Inc.
Dr. Mazel is the Area Manager for Marine Optics and Imaging at Physical Sciences Inc. His research focuses
on the optical properties - fluorescence and reflectance - of marine organisms. He develops equipment and
instruments for observing and measuring these properties, and then applies the new tools in field research.
This has primarily been oriented to SCUBA diving in shallow waters, usually at night, but is now also being
applied to deep-sea search for fluorescing organisms. The work is revealing the wide diversity of plants and
animals that fluoresce (absorb light at one wavelength and emit it at another), although the function of the
effect is not known. In addition to applying these tools to his scientific research, Dr. Mazel has founded a small
company, NightSea, to make the specialized equipment available to others in the scientific community and to
sport divers who want to see fluorescence for themselves, usually on coral reefs. Dr. Mazel has a BA from
Brandeis University, a MS from MIT, and a Ph. D. from Boston University. He didn't go straight through school,
though, and spent time working in the ocean industry, primarily involved with acoustic mapping and imaging of
the seafloor, before returning for his Ph. D. in Marine Biology and becoming involved in research. He has also
participated in numerous underwater archaeology projects, and was Technical Director of the French expedition
to locate the remains of the frigate Medusa off the coast of Mauritania. His many sea trips provided the unpleasant
experiences that motivated his book Heave Ho! My Little Green Book of Seasickness.
Nicole McMullen •
nmcmullen@hboi.edu
Research Assistant
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Nicole recently completed her bachelor's degree in marine biology at Florida Atlantic
University. While pursuing her undergraduate degree she interned at the Dauphin Island
Sea Lab (DISL) and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI). At DISL Nicole studied
the effects of eutrophication and predator removal on seagrass ecosystems. During her
senior internship at HBOI she examined the roles of hunger and satiation as proximate
controls of the vertical migrations of mid-water crustaceans. Nicole is now pursuing
her master's degree at FAU under the supervision of Dr. Tammy Frank. Her research will
focus on the visual ecology of crustaceans.
Mark Schrope •
schrope@hboi.edu
Science writer
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Mark Schrope is the science writer at Harbor Branch Oceanographic. During the Deep Scope cruise he will be
responsible for photos and regular dispatches that will appear on Harbor Branch @Sea expedition website as
well as editing materials written by scientists during the Deep Scope cruise for the NOAA Ocean Explorer site.
Before coming to Harbor Branch Mark worked full-time as a freelance writer and president of Open Water
Media, Inc. His articles have appeared in such publications as Nature, New Scientist, Popular Science, and Outside.
He received a BS in Biology from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, and an MS from Florida State
University in Chemical Oceanography, before working for several years as a research technician at the Virginia
Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, Virginia. To transition into a writing career, he completed a one-year
graduate program in Science Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As both writer and researcher,
Mark has taken part in research cruises to the Southern Ocean, the North Pacific, the Gulf of Maine, and the
Bahamas, among other areas.
Edith A. Widder, PhD •
widder@hboi.edu
Senior Scientist - Co-Principal Investigator
Bioluminescence Research - Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution
Edie Widder received her Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of California,
Santa Barbara in 1982. She joined Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in
1989 where she is now senior scientist and director of the Bioluminescence Department.
She also holds adjunct appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute, Florida Atlantic University and Florida Institute of Technology.
Her research interests in bioluminescence developed out of her experience piloting
the single-person submersibles Wasp and Deep Rover. In 1984, working from Deep Rover,
she made the first video recordings of bioluminescence in the ocean and has been striving
to accurately quantify the phenomenon ever since. This enterprise has involved the
development of a number of instrument systems, including the HIDEX-BP on which she co-holds
the patent and which is now the standard in the U.S. Navy for measuring bioluminescence
in the world's oceans. She is also the developer of Eye-in-the-Sea, a deep-sea observatory
designed to record bioluminescence behaviors in the ocean. Besides being an author on over
50 peer-reviewed scientific publications, Dr. Widder has recently produced a children's
book on bioluminescence, "The Bioluminescence Coloring Book" and an award winning educational
video, "Bioluminescence: Secret Lights in the Sea".
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