Petra Byl awarded John and Anne Flanigan Support Fund Scholarship
Petra BylSOEST oceanography graduate student Petra Byl is this year’s recipient of the John and Anne Flanigan Support Fund award, which is given in support of outstanding research by a graduate student.
“We are extremely fortunate to have generous donors who support high quality oceanographic and environmental research,” said Margaret McManus, chairwoman and professor in the SOEST Department of Oceanography. “With their gifts, our graduate students can focus their time and efforts on research that supports a healthy and productive ocean and environment. We are deeply appreciative of our donors.”
Byl works with oceanography professors Grieg Steward and Kyle Edwards as part of the Marine Viral Ecology Laboratories (MarVEL) research group where she cultivates marine algae and giant virus-host pairs from ocean gyres. She uses genomic and transcriptomic sequencing along with laboratory manipulations to understand how nutrient stress impacts infection dynamics in these virus-host pairs.
“Giant viruses are unique in that they blur the boundary between viruses and cellular life due to their sheer size,” said Byl.
She will use the Flanigan Support Fund to travel to the Joint Genome Institute in Berkeley, CA where she will sequence model systems of giant virus-algae pairs, and analyze the resultant sequence data.