MBL's 2021 Highlights

Students back on campus, highlighting our history, and a new visual identity—2021 has been a busy one for the Marine Biological Laboratory. Dive into some of the most exciting content you may have missed!

MOST POPULAR NEWS STORIES OF THE YEAR

Fast-Learning Cuttlefish Pass the Snacking Test

Much like the popular TikTok challenge where kids resist eating snacks, cuttlefish can do the same. Cuttlefish can delay gratification – wait for a better meal rather than be tempted by the one at hand – and those that can wait longest also do better in a learning test, according to research conducted at the MBL and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The research was covered by news media across the globe— including The Atlantic and NPR—making it our most popular story of the year.

Read the MBL News Release

Deep Learning, Hardware Innovations Boost Performance of Confocal Microscopy

To push confocal imaging to an unprecedented level of performance, a collaboration at the MBL borrowed from Deep Learning AI to reduce phototoxicity and improve volumetric resolution by more than 10x. The study, published in Nature, was shared widely on social media.

Read the MBL News Release

MOST-WATCHED VIDEO

An Octopus Emerges

The California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) is one of two species of octopus cultured at the MBL. In this video—captured by MBL Hibbitt Fellow Carrie Albertin—you can see a clutch of O. bimaculoides eggs, with baby octopuses wriggling inside the casings. The creatures become very active right before hatching and then they poke a small hole at the top of their egg casing (called a chorion), squeeze through, and swim away. The video reached thousands of viewers and was the MBL’s most popular video of the year.

Learn More about this Video

HONORING OUR HISTORY

A Legacy of Leadership

Recognizing that the writing of history has often marginalized the contributions of women, people of color, and other groups that remain underrepresented in science, the MBL launched the Legacy of Leadership project in 2021 to honor people with close MBL ties who have made important, under-recognized contributions to scientific research, education, and administration.

Learn more

BIG NEWS ON CAMPUS

MBL’s New Look

This spring, the MBL unveiled a new visual brand—one that kept the historic ties to our legacy seal while ensuring a new identity that is modernized, simplified, and easily replicated across multiple channels.

Learn more

Growing the MBL Faculty

The MBL made some exciting staff announcements in 2021. We welcomed Anne Sylvester, the new Director of Research, as well as three new scientists to our Ecosystems Center and two to the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Learn more about the Director of Research
Learn more about the new Faculty

IN-PERSON EXCITEMENT

Welcome Back to the Courses

Since COVID-19 kept everyone off campus during 2020, the MBL Education team was overjoyed to welcome students back to campus for 2021. Due to COVID safety protocols, classes had reduced capacity, but 219 students from 42 institutions headed to the MBL this summer for 13 different Advanced Research Training Courses—including the MBL’s first ever “Deep Learning for Microscopy Image Analysis” course.

Apply for a 2022 MBL Course
Learn more about the Deep Learning Course

Lectures in the Cornelia Clapp Auditorium

The Friday Evening Lectures are the quintessential MBL tradition, given each and every summer since our founding in1888. Neither World War I, World War II, nor the flu pandemic of 1918 stopped this tradition and neither did COVID-19 in 2020, when FEL “alumni” helped us carry on the legacy of Friday Evening Lectures virtually. In 2021, we opened up the Cornelia Clapp Auditorium to staff and students as well as streamed the lectures virtually. The July 9 Friday Evening Lecture with Cliff Brangwynne of Princeton University was the most popular, with nearly 150 guests in person and more than 200 streaming virtually. This fall, the MBL opened the Cornelia Clapp Auditorium to everyone in the community for the Falmouth Forum lectures. We look forward to seeing you at a Falmouth Forum very soon!

Watch the Friday Evening Lectures You Missed
See the Falmouth Forum Schedule

Undergraduate Students Head to Woods Hole

While the pandemic kept a number of classes online, UChicago students participating in the MBL Spring Quarter and September Courses came together for an action-packed course schedule that included building their own microscopes, leading research experiments, and field work. Defying the odds, 13 undergraduates from a number of different schools spent their summer at MBL conducting faculty-mentored research as part of the Summer Opportunity for Undergraduate Research (REU) program at the MBL.

Learn more about the UChicago Spring Quarter
Learn more about the September Courses
Learn more about the 2021 REU Cohort

Grass Fellows Arrive on Campus

The Grass Fellowship program, which like all MBL summer programs fell into the black hole of 2020, came back with a bang in 2021. Five Grass Fellows arrived in May studying a range of research organisms, including a crocodilian!

Meet the 2021 Grass Fellows

SOCIAL MEDIA STAR

MBL March Madness

Based on the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament, MBL organisms went head-to-head in a series of match-ups . By a margin of just 106 votes, the Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) was crowned our inaugural MBL March Madness Champion! Don’t forget to check back in the spring for the 2022 bracket and vote for your favorites on our social media channels.

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