MBL Awards Whitman Center Fellowships to 24 Outstanding Investigators

This year, 24 scientists from universities and research institutes around the world have been named 2025 Whitman Center Fellows by the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). These fellowships enable exceptional scientists, including Early Career Fellows, to conduct independent research at the MBL and take advantage of its unique resources and highly collaborative scientific community.

Whitman Center Fellows are supported for up to 10 weeks to pursue research, particularly within these fields:

• Evolutionary, genetic, and genomic approaches in regenerative and developmental biology, microbiomes, and neuroscience with an emphasis on marine organisms.
• Integrated imaging and computational approaches to illuminate cellular function and biology emerging from the study of marine and other organisms.
• Integrated approaches to the study of microbial communities and marine organisms in coastal communities.
• Research on global change and ecosystem ecology including research that leverages the MBL's Long-Term Ecological Research site at Plum Island, Massachusetts as well as long-term study sites on Cape Cod.

During their time at the MBL, fellows have access to state-of-the-art instrumentation, innovative imaging technology and research, genome sequencing, marine and freshwater research organisms, and modern laboratory facilities. They become part of a dynamic, interactive, and creative scientific environment. In addition to its resident research programs, the MBL annually convenes hundreds of principal investigators, postdocs, graduate students, and research associates from around the world to participate in Whitman Center research, scientific discovery courses, lectures, and field studies.

This gallery shows just a few of the many organisms this year's Whitman Fellows will be researching.

Several of the Whitman Fellows are coming to the MBL for the first time to launch a new project, while others will continue research programs they established in the Whitman Center in prior years. The fellows are:

Whitman Early Career Fellows

Horst Andreas Obenhaus, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at NTNU
Investigations into active sleep in cuttlefish and octopuses

Shiri Kult Perry, The University of Chicago
Mechanisms underlying pulmonary fibrosis in the Xenopus model

Kristina Lippmann, Leipzig University
Structural correlates of short-term facilitation at a cortical synapse

Jacob (Jake) Warner, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Developing the GRNs of cell type specification in the temperate coral Astrangia poculata

Anna Clemencia Guerrero, Santa Fe Institute
History of Imaging Technology Exhibit at MBL

Nathaniel Donaldson Ponvert, University of Arizona
Uncovering long-distance signaling mechanisms to establish bidirectional communication with plants

Ekasit Sonpho, Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Establishing transgenic planarians by leveraging VitelloTag for in ovo transfection

Thomas Litschel, Harvard University
Exploring a direct link between reactive oxygen species and actin remodeling in wound
healing using Clytia hemisphaerica

Chelsea Olivia Bennice, Florida Atlantic University
Octopus health: determining hemolymph values and microbiomes for basic health standards in a laboratory setting

Jessica Goodheart, American Museum of Natural History
Establishing functional tools in a nudibranch mollusk to investigate phagocytosis evolution

Guilherme Gainett Cardoso M C Florez, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Advancing genomic tools in the Atlantic horseshoe crab to study major transitions in visual systems

Takato Honda, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Investigation of evolutionary origins of sleep states and state-specific neural representations

Daniel Benjamin Cortes, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
An ecological, morphological and phylogenomic survey of Cape Cod Stentors

Whitman Fellows

Brian Michael Jr. McDermott, Case Western Reserve University
Molecules of the hair cell mechanotransduction apparatus of cephalopods

Paulyn Cartwright, University of Kansas
Genome editing approaches to testing toxin function in the hydrozoan Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus

Christine D (Chris) Keating, Penn State University Park
Artificial coral hosts for living dymbionts

Matthew P. Harris, Harvard Medical School; Boston Children's Hospital
Bivalve genetics and genomics towards understanding the regulation of longevity

Patrick Alfryn Lewis, Royal Veterinary College
Dissecting the function of the leucine-rich repeat kinases in the development and regeneration of Nematostella vectensis

Jan Pruszak, Paracelsus Medical University (PMU)
Deciphering surface molecular signatures in axolotl regeneration

Indu Sharma, Hampton University
Investigating polysaccharide utilization in Cyclobacterium marinum and other marine microbes using fluorescently labeled polysaccharides (FLAPs) and super-resolution microscopy

Gary James Gorbsky, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Development of embryonic stem cell lines and induced pluripotent stem cell lines for Xenopus laevis and Xenopus tropicalis

Martin Knytl, Charles University
Developmental systems drift of secondary sexual differentiation using genome editing in African clawed frogs (Xenopus)

Letizia Zullo, IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino
Octopus bimaculoides single arm food retrieval strategies: Toward understanding of action selection in a complex invertebrate

Koenraad Roger L. (Koen) Martens, Royal Belgian Institute of natural Sciences
Ostracods in a changing world