Engineering Biodegradable Plastics for Tomorrow’s Ocean

Our meetings are hybrid; you may attend in-person or on Zoom. Register here to get information about attending.

Plastic is critical to the blue economy–industries in and around the ocean. A surprising amount of plastic debris in the open ocean originates from these marine industries. Dr. Santoro will discuss Nereid Biomaterials’ efforts to create self-eating plastics created specifically for marine applications by capitalizing on what we know about naturally-occurring bacteria in the ocean.

Dr. Alyson Santoro, Professor, UCSB Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology (EEMB)
Dr. Santoro’s research focuses on microbes involved in nutrient cycling in the ocean. Her research combines laboratory experiments with field observations. To date it has used genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and stable isotope geochemistry to uncover the activity of microbes in the ocean. In addition to being a professor in UCSB’s EEMB Department, she is a Principal Investigator at Nereid Biomaterials, a tech transfer project currently supported by the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program.

Dr. Santoro received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University in Environmental Engineering. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she was a faculty member at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science before joining the faculty at UCSB. She is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Early Career Fellowship and a Simons Foundation Early Career Investigator Award in Marine Microbial Ecology.

Location: Our speaker will present in person at Community West Bank conference room at 445 Pine Ave. off Hollister Ave. in Goleta, and on Zoom. When you register, we send a confirmation email containing Zoom data, directions to the in-person location and meal details.