Dr. Judith Pederson of MIT Sea Grant is spearheading the fifth Rapid Assessment

Survey of Marine Invasive Species in collaboration with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management. The assessment, stretching from Casco Bay in Maine to Rhode Island, will be conducted with taxonomic experts from Europe, South America and the U.S. who are familiar with native and non-native species.

The survey will last one week, from July 24th - 31^st, and will provide information to improve the management and control of non-native species.

This summer, Dr. Juliet Simpson of MIT Sea Grant will be conducting surveys of salt marshes in Duxbury Bay to study habitat quality and vulnerability to sea level rise. The project is being undertaken in collaboration with the Massachusetts Bays Program and the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management. Both remotely sensed data and on-the-ground field assessments will be used to measure biodiversity, tidal restrictions, land use in adjacent terrestrial areas, and other factors affecting ecosystem health. This information will be used to make recommendations for land use planning, enabling coastal communities to more effectively allocate resources to mitigate and/or avoid climate related impacts to property and coastal infrastructure.

A hand-blown glass remotely operated vehicle, the result of collaboration between  the MIT List Visual Arts Center artist-in-residence, Tavares Strachan, and MIT Sea Grant is now on view through July 11, 2010 at the List Visual Arts Center, in Cambridge, Mass. on the MIT campus.

MIT Sea Grant collaborates with artists and cultural organizations in order to amplify the themes of MIT Sea Grant's work. By collaborating with artists who use MIT Sea Grant technology, theory or research, we are able to reach audiences who might not otherwise come in contact with our work.

Brenden Epps is a postdoctoral research associate who is developing design and analysis tools for marine propellers and energy harvesting turbines. His current work focuses on two efficient computational tools: (1) a propeller lifting surface code for preliminary design and analysis, and (2) an advanced computational fluid dynamics code for detailed performance predictions. Epps also supervises graduate students in the design, construction, and experimental testing of propellers and marine turbines. Brenden received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he used experiment and simulation to study the propulsive forces generated by swimming fish and spinning propellers.

Mirjana Milosevic Marden is an electrical engineer who is developing models and control systems of integrated power for an electric ship. As a former postdoctoral fellow at MIT Sea Grant in the Design Lab, Marden focused on an alternating current integrated power system, developing Matlab and Simulink models for components and their controllers.  She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology where she focused on the control of distributed generation in power systems.

Gayle Sherman is Administrative Assistant for the Marine Advisory Services. For the past nine years she served as the Assistant for the Master of Engineering Program and Administrative Assistant in the MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.She brings her organizational skills, experience in publishing and print design, and financial skills to the Marine Advisory Service. She lives in Cambridge and is active in the community.