Season Opener: UChicago's Spring Quarter at MBL Leads Off

Marine organisms collected while on the Gemma.
Marine organisms collected on the Gemma for Microbiomes course. Credit David Mark Welch/MBL
By Diana Kenney April 02, 2021
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MBL Director Nipam Patel instructs UChicago student Michelangelo Neff during "Biological Imaging" last fall at MBL. Credit: Daniel Cojanu
MBL Director Nipam Patel instructs UChicago student Michelangelo Neff during "Biological Imaging" last fall at MBL. Credit: Daniel Cojanu

The MBL’s spring and summer educational season has begun! We are excited to see the campus coming alive again, after months of careful planning.

On March 21, the season started when 12 University of Chicago undergraduates arrived for their MBL Spring Quarter. This program builds on the success of the inaugural MBL Autumn Quarter – which was MBL’s proof-of-concept for running research courses under Covid-19 restrictions and with safety considerations paramount.

This spring’s students hail from several majors, including Biology, Global Studies, Computer Science, and Computational and Applied Mathematics. And they have exciting new courses to choose from at MBL, including “Stem Cells and Regeneration,” taught by Karen Echeverri; “Optics, Waves and Modern Physics at MBL,” taught by Patrick LaRivière and Rudolf Oldenbourg; and “Visual Language: On Images,” taught by Frances Lee and Nipam Patel.

In addition, the quarter offerings include “Imaging for Biological Research,” which made its debut at MBL last fall; and a new course offered in conjunction with the SEA Education Association in Woods Hole, “Biological Oceanography,” to include student field research on SEA’s research vessel, the SSV Corwith Cramer.

Keep an eye out this spring for a feature story as the MBL Spring Quarter blossoms!