By: Kiran Reed

Hello everyone! My name is Kiran and I am a 3rd year masters student in Dr. Mark Steele’s fish ecology lab at CSU, Northridge. My project there, and as a 2021 Wrigley Summer Fellow, aims to show how a visual giant sea bass predator cue impacts behavior of smaller fishes. Generally, I am very interested in questions surrounding fish behavior!

Giant sea bass (GSB) are a particularly cool species to study, I think, because so little is known about them and their ecology. The species was fished to ecological extinction in the 20th century; however, in recent years populations have started to slowly recover. Right now, there are just enough out there that we can start to learn more about them. GSB is one of the few fish apex predators in the Southern California Bight and the only one that inhabits coastal rocky reefs, so they hold a pretty unique niche in the ecosystem.

Since studying real GSB can be unreliable and tricky, I spent many of my quarantined months building a fake GSB model. In order to do this, I worked with Reynold’s Advanced Materials, which is a store in Burbank that supplies materials to a lot of Hollywood prop builders. I took a mold of a taxidermied GSB and then cast and painted my own rubber replicate:

Using a model predator allows me to standardize the visual predator cue that smaller fish are exposed to, which helps to eliminate some unwanted variability in my data. In order to attract smaller fish, I attach my model GSB to a baited remote underwater video system (or BRUV for short). The BRUV is baited, so I can watch how fish act and feed differently when my model GSB is attached or not.

I have spent this summer traveling around to sites that have higher and lower GSB densities and have run BRUV trials with and without my model GSB attached. Though I haven’t had a chance to crunch the numbers yet, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to find some differences in how fish respond to my model GSB!

This will be the first study to show how GSB ecologically affect other species. As GSB populations continue to recover, it’s important to understand how their growing presence in coastal CA kelp forests might impact ecological dynamics of the system.

By: Zach Wood

Hi everyone! My name is Zach Wood and I am currently a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the chemistry department at USC under the mentorship of Professor Megan Fieser. The Fieser Lab broadly focuses on designing molecules that can enable sustainable transformations such as the synthesis of environmentally friendly plastics (polymers) or recycling of current plastics.

Our demand for plastics has grown exponentially over the years, with it being projected that by 2050 production for food packaging will reach 318 million tons alone. Of the plastic that we produce each year, only 2% is processed through closed loop recycling. Therefore, finding solutions to decrease the accumulation of this plastic waste will be greatly beneficial to improving the health of our environment.

Image of plastic collected during February 2020 Hermosa Beach Cleanup. Photo taken by Maurice Roper.

The Fieser Lab is interested in utilizing rare earth metals as catalysts to synthesize sustainable polymers. The role of these catalysts is to help increase the rate at which the polymers grow while also making sure the reaction is controlled. The way I like to think about this is how coffee can act as a catalyst for my productivity: it can help me get things done faster (increased rate) while also allowing me to focus on the task at hand (control).

My summer research as a Wrigley Institute Sonosky Fellow involved synthesizing polymers that can potentially be a biodegradable alternative to plastics such as the PET used for plastic bottles. Many projects in the Fieser Lab involve synthesizing a supporting framework for the rare earth metals that adds stability to the catalyst in addition to increased control of the polymerization. However, my project focuses on using rare earth salts as catalysts, which is different than other projects in the lab because I don’t have to perform any synthesis to get to the active catalyst. This work has many potential advantages over current systems such as simplicity and cost. While my work is still being performed on a small scale in the lab, the future applications are promising and the Fieser lab is excited to pursue more research involving these rare earth salts.

Before crashing out polymers from solution that I synthesize, I document what color the reactions are after completion.

My day-to-day activities in the lab included many different experiments that ranged from setting up 20 reactions that run at the same time to analyzing the polymers that I made through methods available here at USC and the Fieser Lab. One of the most fun things that I found in the lab was the surprising feel of the plastics once I made them. Depending on the building blocks I used to make the polymer the feel could range from a viscous gel to brittle solid. Being able to feel the product you make in a chemistry lab and see how it could be used for different applications is something I have never experienced before and helps me see how my work can be directly impactful.

Me holding a sample of a polymer I made in the lab this summer.

As I finish my summer experiments, I have reflected on how much I have enjoyed my experience in the Fieser Lab this summer. I am surrounded by awesome teammates that are supportive of my work and challenge me scientifically. Additionally, the Fieser Lab performs beach cleanups that involve not only cleaning our beaches but learning about how everyone can help solve the plastic pollution problem we currently face. Opportunities like this only help me motivate my work in the lab even more.

And finally, a big thank you to the Wrigley Institute for all their support this summer!