Stefania Bianco, 2nd year student from CU1, received a prestigious award by an international organisation for her research activities
Our PhD candidate Stefania Bianco has been awarded the Okada-McIntyre Graduate Research Fellowship 2023 ($2500) by the International Nannoplankton Association!
The Okada-McIntyre Graduate Research Fellowships honor Professors Dr. Hisatake Okada and Dr. Andrew McIntyre for their pioneering contributions to extant/recent nannoplankton research and to INA, and are intended to support students actively seeking advanced degrees researching various aspects of ecological dynamics related to modern and recent calcareous nannoplankton (see https://ina.tmsoc.org/ina/INAfoundation/index.htm).
Stefania is a PhD student at Università degli Studi di Pavia and is enrolled in our Sustainable Development and Climate Change National Program at IUSS Pavia. Her research is conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS, Trieste - Italy) under the supervision of Claudia Lupi and Andrea Di Giulio of the University of Pavia, and Manuela Bordiga of OGS.
The Okada-McIntyre fellowship will allow Stefania to conduct new experiments on the target species Helicosphaera carteri, at OGS, under controlled CO2 culture conditions. The collected data will be used to clarify the tolerance of the species to the progressive increase in atmospheric CO2, to evaluate its contribution to the permanent stock of atmospheric carbon in the ocean, and to clarify its ecological preferences, which are still the subject of debate.
Keep up with the good work!
