Undergrad advances from international science fairs to ocean microbe research
Nicole Sulla Mathews
Born and raised on the island of Guam and having attended St. John’s School from the time she was in kindergarten, Nicole Sulla Mathews said coming to the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa to pursue a bachelor’s degree was a major change in almost all aspects. One thing that didn’t change, however, was her longstanding interest in environmental science.
“Ever since middle school, I have been interested in environmental science,” Mathews shared. “It started with water sampling but expanded to soil science, as well. I am very fortunate to have a great support system from my family and teachers at St.John’s and was provided with the great opportunity to take my science projects to island-wide and international science fairs.”
As an undergraduate student in the Global Environmental Sciences degree program in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), Mathews completed a few oceanography courses and learned, for the first time, about research opportunities in that discipline.
Mathews joined the Hawai‘i Ocean Time-series program for one of their monthly cruises, 60 miles north of O‘ahu at Station ALOHA. Onboard the cruise, she got first-hand experience with oceanographic sampling and testing, while helping the UH Mānoa oceanographers conduct their research.
“I loved being at sea and learning about ocean science,” said Mathews. “That led me to pursue a senior thesis focused on microbial oceanography.”
Working with UH Mānoa oceanography professor Angelicque White and researcher Fernanda Henderikx Freitas, Mathews analyzes images from an Imaging Flow Cytobot, a machine that captures images of microscopic organisms for identification of marine plankton.
“Since our automated classifier is still learning how to accurately classify the organisms, I work on manually annotating and sorting taxa, ideally to the genus level,” said Mathews. “For my thesis, I am annotating images from the research cruises PARAGON 1 and 2 and will be looking for trends in different classes of microbes during various stages of algal blooms.”
“It is always a bit of a thrill to see someone first lay eyes on the wild diversity of microbial characters that allow our oceans to thrive” said White. “I get to see the outcomes but Fernanda Henderikx Freitas has been working directly with Nicole and others to create a training pipeline for students to quickly learn relevant taxonomic details about ocean plankton and help train our machine learning tools to see what we see. It’s an exciting time in the arc of ocean science.”
In addition to coursework and research, Mathews has been working in the SOEST Student Academic Services Office since November 2021. There, she interacts with current and prospective students, creates content for social media and graphics for the weekly undergraduate student newsletter, and organizes events. For her outstanding efforts, she was recently honored with a UH Mānoa Student Employee of the Year Award, which included a $750 cash scholarship.
“I really enjoy meeting with prospective students and their families to talk about our school,” said Mathews. “It’s always fun to meet people from different places visiting UHM and getting to show students and families our campus and school.”
Following graduation in Spring 2024, she plans to pursue her teaching certification in secondary science.
“My mom and brother are both teachers at my alma mater and I hope, sometime in the future, I will be teaching alongside them,” Mathews said. “I also want to continue in school and pursue a masters in oceanography where I can continue my undergraduate research and hopefully go back out to sea.”
Read also on UH News.