Jessica Luo is a doctor!
by Jean-Olivier Irisson, on
Jessica Luo was a RSMAS PhD student under the supervision of Bob Cowen, the original coordinator of this PUF program at RSMAS (before he moved to Oregon State University). She is not a student anymore now but a doctor, after brilliantly defending her dissertation on Oct 30th, at RSMAS!
She studied gelatinous zooplankton (i.e. jellies) using the data and images collected by the In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS). During her PhD, she also came to Villefranche for a class and learn image analysis tools, she participated in the VISUFRONT cruise funded by this PUF project, collaborated with Robin Faillettaz (a PhD student at OOV who will also defend soon) and myself. I was very happy to be part of her PhD thesis committee, to be present at her defense, and to be co-author on one of her dissertation papers. From what I saw in her manuscript, there are many more to come.
Jessica also invested a lot of time in the planktonportal project, a collaborative science website where enthusiasts can help identify plankton on ISIIS images. As a nice gift to Jessica, yshish (the very active volunteer moderator of that project) organised a contest to reach 1,000,000 plankton identifications on the project. That incredible milestone was met (and even exceeded) by the time Jessica defended. Big shoutout to the planktonportal community!
For the next year, Jessica will continue to work with Bob Cowen and Su Sponaugle in Oregon, which will give her the opportunity to publish all the good science she presented us and to do further research with plankton images and data, in tandem with us in Villefranche.
