Author: Alfia

Sarah Ferner develops, leads, and teaches education programs for NOAA’s National Estuarine Research Reserve System in San Francisco Bay. As the Reserve’s first Education Coordinator, her job tasks are diverse – ranging from writing for publications and interpretive signs, to teaching teachers about new Next Generation Science Standards, to counting plants deep within Suisun Marsh, and more. Through it all, she likes to traverse the muddy transitions between water and land, and between science and education, following her passion for connecting people to nature through science. She is a certified California Master Naturalist. Previously, Sarah worked closely with the Chesapeake Bay-Virginia NERR as a Graduate Research Fellow where she studied the vegetation community change in a tidal freshwater marsh. Sarah received a B.A. in Biology from Carleton College and an M.Sc. in Marine Science from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science/College of William and Mary, and has over 15 years of experience teaching science to students, community members, and educators.

All sessions are free, geared towards teenage students (but open to all), and take place Wednesday evenings from 7:30 – 8:30 pm at Terra Linda High School (320 Nova Albion, San Rafael), Room 207.  Details can be found at http://www.marinscienceseminar.com/calendar.html Thank you.

SEPTEMBER

27: “Not Your Mother’s Genes: How Maternal and Developmental Plasticity Shift Climate Change Responses in the Eelgrass Sea Hare” with Richelle Tanner of UC Berkeley

OCTOBER

4: “Cyborgs! The Not-so-distant Future of Human-Machine Integration” with Nuria Vendrell-Llopis of UC Berkeley’s Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory

11: “Name that Bloodsucker!” with Eric Engh of Marin-Sonoma Mosquito Vector

18: “When Parasites Kill: Changing Antimalarial Drug Sensitivities in Uganda” with Stephanie Rasmussen of Dominican University & UCSF

NOVEMBER

8: “Flooded by Science and Seawater: King Tides and What they Can Tell us about Sea Level Rise at China Camp State Park” with Sarah Ferner of San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve – a program of NOAA and SF State University

15: “Making Faces: Developmental Mechanisms of Craniofacial Evolution” with Richard Schneider of UCSF

Explore science and technology, meet scientists and medical professionals, gain experience for your resume and college applications, develop a portfolio! 

What Really Killed the Dinosaurs? 

Ammonites, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, and most famously, dinosaurs, are just a small percentage of the 75% of species that went extinct at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. What caused this mass extinction? Was it a giant meteor impact? Massive outpourings of lava and gas? Or something else all together? Join Ph.D. student, Courtney Sprain, as she walks you through the very Berkeley-centric history of the of the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and how current UC-Berkeley scientists are employing new techniques to further understand what really killed the dinosaurs. 

Courtney Sprain is a graduate student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley. In addition to her work at the Berkeley Geochronology Center with Paul Renne on late Cretaceous Earth history, Courtney Sprain works on the records of late Mesoproterozoic paleogeography and paleointensity from the North American Midcontinent Rift in the UC Berkeley Paleomagnetism Lab.

Invention in Medicine

How Medical Devices get Invented and Go to Market

Art Wallace started out in experimental surgery and radiology studying imaging of the heart using CT

scanners. He has worked on a number of devices that originally were built for experimental studies that evolved into clinically useful devices including a cardiac output monitor, the off pump CABG, off pump aneurysm surgery, electronic sedation, and a selective coronary vasodialtor. Dr. Wallace will explain his experiences with the inventive process using examples from both device design and drug development. There will be a brief discussion of the importance of intellectual property, patents, venture capital, FDA approval, and business development in completing the invention process. There will be a demonstration of his recent developmental project on a non-contact, remote patient monitor designed to prevent cardiac arrests.

Dr. Wallace is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at UCSF Medical Center, and Chief of Anesthesia Service at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Dr. Wallace holds a B.S. in Engineering from Yale University and received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His Ph.D. is in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Wallace completed his anesthesiology residency and a fellowship in Cardiac Anesthesiology at UCSF.