Bethany D. Jenkins PhD

Dr. Bethany Jenkins came to URI, there were two things that attracted her to the idea of establishing an academic career on the East Coast the Graduate School of Oceanography, and the fact that the school had a close association with the College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS). “she like the combination of research possibilities such as the Genomics and Sequencing Center on the main campus,” she said in an interview shortly after she arrived in 2005, “and the GSO.” Jenkins thus maintains a dual role in two colleges while she is actually on the CELS faculty she works closely with colleagues in research projects at GSO.

Jenkins is most interested in studying a group of phytoplankton called diatoms, which produce about a quarter of the oxygen on earth. “she likens them to the rainforest of the ocean. They are part of an important group of photosynthetic organisms that help balance carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They take it up as part of their photosynthetic processes in their cells and are really important at the bottom of the food web. They are balancing carbon and providing food for other marine animals.” Jenkins, who receives financial support from NSF, RI Sea Grant, and staff funding, explains that she and her group have been using genetic and genomic methods to gain a better understanding of nutrient metabolism in the organisms that live in different ecosystems in the oceans.