U.S. consumers are willing to pay more for lobster harvested using ropeless fishing technology designed to reduce whale entanglement risks, according to new 91±ŹÁÏ research.

A study led by Qiujie “Angie” Zheng, associate professor of business analytics in the 91±ŹÁÏ’s Maine Business School, found that consumers are willing to pay an average of $3.42 more for a lobster roll made with lobster harvested using ropeless fishing technology when presented with information on animal welfare.

The research explored how consumers might respond if conditions necessitate ropeless technology to be adopted more broadly in the future. Zheng said the findings are not intended to suggest Maine’s lobster industry should change its current practices.

Maine’s lobster industry has implemented whale-protection measures for decades, including weak links, sinking lines and reduced vertical line requirements aimed at lowering entanglement risks. The fishery supplies roughly 90% of the nation’s lobster and remains one of Maine’s most recognizable economic and cultural drivers.

The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, with an estimated population of 356 whales and fewer than 100 reproductive-age females.

Traditional lobster gear uses vertical lines connecting traps to surface buoys, which regulators and researchers have sought to modify in order to reduce entanglement risks for large whales. Federal regulators and environmental groups have debated the extent to which Maine lobster gear contributes to right whale deaths, though the industry has faced increasing pressure to reduce potential risks.

While existing protections are already in place within Maine’s fishery, Zheng said consumers may also play a role in bearing the cost of whale conservation through their purchasing decisions.

“Right whale conservation is a collective effort. In addition to the fishermen, regulators and scientists, consumers play a role, so we hope this research helps understand consumer preferences and evaluations,” Zheng said. “These findings do not suggest that Maine’s lobster industry needs to change its current practices. Rather, they provide insight into how consumers might respond if ropeless technology were adopted.”

Zheng collaborated with Kanae Tokunaga from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Rodolfo Nayga and Wei Yang from Texas A&M University to explore consumer preferences and demand perspective of ropeless technology, as well as marketing and communication strategies surrounding the gear.

Researchers tested how information about whale conservation, animal welfare and Maine’s lobster industry shaped consumer willingness to pay more for lobster harvested using ropeless technology. Messaging focused on whale welfare and entanglement impacts proved most effective at increasing support for ropeless technology, with consumers willing to pay more.

However, this was further varied by consumers’ attitudes toward the environment and animal welfare, as well as their prior knowledge of right whale entanglement and ropeless technology, Zheng said.

“The results provide a baseline for considering different perspectives. With four treatments, including the control, we can see how different types of information influence consumer perspectives,” she said.

Zheng said she hopes the research will contribute valuable insights to Maine’s seafood sector about how consumers respond to different marketing approaches and sustainability messaging as environmental concerns increasingly influence food purchasing behaviors.

“We are providing a base for the community to assess the overall economic feasibility,” Zheng said. “I’m always trying to learn from fishermen and the fishing community because they make their living from a very complicated natural system, and they know it so well.”

Findings from the study were published in the journal .Ìę

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.eduÌę

The academy announced Tuesday the election of 120 members and 25 international members, bringing its total membership to 2,705 active members and 557 international members.

Steneck spent more than four decades at 91±ŹÁÏ, where he helped shape marine research and policy through studies of kelp forests, lobster fisheries and coral reefs. He retired in 2023 as a professor of oceanography, marine biology and marine policy.

“Dr. Steneck’s election to the National Academy of Sciences is a well-deserved honor,” 91±ŹÁÏ President Joan Ferrini-Mundy said. “His research has advanced our understanding of coastal ecosystems and helped shape marine science and policy, while his mentorship has inspired generations of students to pursue meaningful work in the field. We are proud and grateful that his distinguished career has been here at the 91±ŹÁÏ.”

A marine ecologist, Steneck has focused on the structure and function of coastal ecosystems, particularly in the Gulf of Maine and the Caribbean. His research examines food webs, dominant species and ecological processes in benthic marine environments, often through in situ observation using scuba diving, underwater video systems and remotely operated vehicles.

For more than 40 years, his work in Maine has explored kelp forest ecosystems and the relationships among lobsters, sea urchins and fish stocks. His research also spans the Caribbean and tropical Pacific, where long-term studies of coral reefs have informed strategies to improve reef resilience.

Steneck joined 91±ŹÁÏ in 1982 and was among the first marine ecologists to collaborate directly with lobstermen, integrating scientific research with industry knowledge. His work contributed to new approaches to studying and managing Maine’s lobster fishery and broader coastal ecosystems.

In addition to his research, Steneck emphasized hands-on learning, involving students in all aspects of scientific work, from proposal writing to data collection and publication.

“I have always been passionate about getting students into the field for experiential learning,” he said.

In 1993, Steneck developed a proposal for Semester by the Sea at 91±ŹÁÏ’s Darling Marine Center, an undergraduate program that continues today. He later expanded those opportunities globally, teaching a graduate coral reef course that, beginning in 2003, brought students to Bonaire in the Caribbean for two decades to monitor reef health.

“The student projects became a valued part of the island’s coral reef monitoring program,” he said.

Many of Steneck’s former students have gone on to leadership roles in marine science, conservation and policy. That list includes Carl Wilson, commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, who started as an intern on Steneck’s lobster project and went on to earn his degree from 91±ŹÁÏ’s School of Marine Sciences.

“I’ve had a bevy of terrific students, and their careers are what I’m most proud of,” Steneck said. “Seeing them go on to make meaningful contributions in science, conservation and policy is one of the most rewarding parts of the work.”

Founded in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences recognizes achievement in science and provides independent advice to the U.S. government.

Steneck’s election follows other recent honors, including his 2025 induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, further recognizing his impact on marine science and conservation.

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu 

When phages infect and reproduce inside bacteria, the consequences can be dire. Phages that infect bacteria can contribute to their drug-resistance and ability to cause disease. A new study led by 91±ŹÁÏ researchers aims to find out why. 

A deeper understanding of phages’ ability to influence bacteria could allow for more targeted medical treatment of often drug-resistant diseases. Despite these viruses being the most abundant biological entity on earth, many people do not know what they are, and fewer are studying them. 

Research led by Sally Molloy, 91±ŹÁÏ associate professor of genomics, is seeking to change that. Thanks to a recently awarded National Institutes of Health (NIH) R15 grant, Molloy’s  research team will continue to investigate phages’ abilities to promote drug resistance in bacteria. It will also help her expand the hands-on experiences she offers to get undergraduate students involved in potentially life-saving science. 

According to World Health Organization’s , “In 2023, approximately one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide were caused by bacteria resistant to antibiotics.”

Phages specifically target bacteria. They have two abilities. The first is acting as a parasite within bacteria. They infect the bacteria, reproduce and when their progeny are released, kill the bacteria cells. The second ability phages have is more interesting. 

“They live latently, quietly, maybe borderline symbiotically with the bacterium by integrating their viral genome into the bacterial genome,” said Molloy. 

When the phage integrates its genome into the host bacteria, the cell does not die. Instead, it enhances the bacterial cell’s survival skills, by providing resistance to infection by other phages and sometimes by providing resistance to antibiotics.

Molloy’s research looks at the genes phages bring into bacteria. Specifically, she’s studying how they contribute to increased drug resistance. The bacteria Molloy and her team study are part of a group of Gram positive bacteria that include important pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which kills more people worldwide than any other infectious agent, and M.  abscessus, one of the most drug-resistant pathogens.

These diseases can be closer to home than some may think. M. abscessus-chelonae is a non-tuberculosis mycobacteria that causes pulmonary and soft-tissue infections and can be multi-drug or totally drug resistant. It causes pulmonary and soft-tissue infections in the elderly, immunocompromised and in patients with chronic lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis. 

Scientists have found some success treating the drug resistant disease with phage therapy, which uses injected phages to target and kill bacteria causing disease. Molloy’s research into how phages influence drug-resistance in bacteria may provide opportunities for other researchers to improve treatment of mycobacterial disease using both drug and phage treatments. 

Molloy first came to 91±ŹÁÏ as a graduate student and has remained through her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research. Within the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences and the Honors College, Molloy integrates teaching with her research to engage undergraduate and graduate students in active learning. With a recently awarded NIH R15 grant, Molloy is training undergraduates as part of her research into phages.

For the students in Molloy’s lab, partaking in this research can be especially important. 

“If you’re doing research that’s going to make a difference with this real world problem, how you learn and what you learn completely changes,” said Molloy. “You’re applying your knowledge to a real problem that you care about and maybe the whole community cares about.” 

This work has the potential to save lives, not just through treating disease, but by training the next generation of doctors, scientists and researchers in the field of microbiology. 

“We’re training them for the work force and to be ready to be contributors for whatever problems they’re going to be working on,” said Molloy. 

With the support of the NIH R15 grant, Molloy will be able to continue to bring more undergraduate students like Vejune Griciute and Edib Redzematovic into her lab, where they continue to work on understanding phages and their contribution to bacteria drug resistance. 

“It’s more motivating to learn things when you feel like you’re making important contributions to something that really matters, not only to you but to a community,” she said.

The importance of phages cannot be underestimated. 

“They impact our lives every single day,” said Molloy. “We’re exposed to them everywhere.” With Molloy and her team of students, research is paving the way towards using the innate ability of phages as a treatment rather than a disease.

By Emma Beauregard, research media intern

Contact: Erin Miller, erin.miller@maine.edu 

Tenure for 17 of the faculty members was approved by the 91±ŹÁÏ System Board of Trustees on March 16.

“These promotions highlight the excellence of 91±ŹÁÏ’s faculty. Whether in the classroom, in the lab, or the field, their accomplishments are impressive and are a testament to their commitment to student success, discovery, and service to the state. We take great pride in the achievements of these faculty,” says Gabriel Paquette, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at 91±ŹÁÏ.

“Each promotion and tenure decision reflects both individual excellence and the strength of our academic community,” said 91±ŹÁÏ President Joan Ferrini-Mundy. “As a learner-centered R1 university, we advance research that matters while keeping students at the heart of all we do. These faculty exemplify that mission.”

91±ŹÁÏ

Promoted to Professor

• College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences
  • Alicia Cruz-Uribe, Petrology and Mineralogy
  • Adam Daigneault, Forest Policy and Economics
  • Shawn Fraver, Forest Ecology
  • Daniel Hayes, Geospatial Analysis and Remote Sensing
  • Anil Kizhakkepurakkal, Forest Operations
  • Melissa Maginnis, Microbiology
  • Caroline Noblet, Economics
  • Aaron Putnam, Earth Sciences
  • Kelley Strout, Nursing
  • Timothy Waring, Social-Ecological Systems of Modeling
• College of Education and Human Development
  • Catharine Biddle, Educational Leadership
• College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • Ryan Dippre, English
  • William Gramlich, Chemistry
  • Gregory Zaro, Anthropology and Climate Change
• Maine College of Engineering and Computing
  • Caitlin Howell, Bioengineering
  • Thomas Schwartz, Chemical Engineering

Promoted to Extension Professor

• Cooperative Extension
  • Colt Knight, Extension Livestock Educator

Promoted to Professor with Tenure

• College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences
  • Lisa Kerr, Fisheries Science

Granted Tenure at Current Rank of Professor

• College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • Jonathan Barron, English

Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure

• College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences
  • Noah Charney, Conservation Biology
  • Katherine Weatherford Darling, Health Science
  • Philip Fanning, Agricultural Entomology
  • Jonathan Malacarne, Agricultural Economics
  • Jane Puhlman, Communication Sciences and Disorders
  • Jessica Riccardi, Communication Sciences and Disorders
• College of Education and Human Development
  • Melissa Cuba, Special Education
  • Kathleen Gillon, Higher Education
  • Daniel Puhlman, Family Studies
• College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • Gilbert Moss, Mathematics
  • Neel Patel, Mathematics
  • Franziska Peterson, Mathematics Education
  • Nimesha Ranasinghe, Spatial Informatics
  • Johanna Richlin, Anthropology
  • Jane Wang, Mathematics

Promoted to Associate Extension Professor with Continuing Contract

• Cooperative Extension
  • Sean Birkel, Climate Services
  • Michael Habte-tsion, Fish Nutrition
  • Glenda Pereira Parente, Animal Science/Dairy Specialist

Promoted to Associate Professor

• College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences
  • Christina Murphy, USGS Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit

Promoted to Senior Lecturer with Just-Cause 

• College of Education and Human Development
  • Maria Frankland, Educational Leadership
• College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
  • Matthew Bates, Mathematics

91±ŹÁÏ at Machias

Promoted to Senior Lecturer with Just-Cause 

• 91±ŹÁÏ at Machias
  • Daniel Ellis, English

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

These questions serve as the inspiration behind the latest book from Caroline Bicks, professor of English at the 91±ŹÁÏ, which delves into the creative methodology of 91±ŹÁÏ’s most famous literary alumnus, Stephen King, by leveraging unprecedented access to his archives.

“Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King” is an exploration of King’s process through an examination of five of his earliest works: “Carrie,” “Salem’s Lot,” “The Shining,” “Pet Sematary” and “Night Shift.” The public launch party for “Monsters in the Archives” will take place at 6:30 p.m. today  at Orono Brewing Company and will feature a conversation between Bicks and Justin Soderberg.

Through close readings of early drafts and comparisons to the final products, Bicks shows us how editorial choices and changes, whether large or small, can impact the flashlight-illuminated pages under the bedcovers that we ultimately experience.

But the book is also a story about Bicks’s own relationship with King’s work, from her discovery of the author’s work at a local library as a teenager through her 2017 appointment as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at 91±ŹÁÏ and the writing of this book. The result is a blend of the personal and professional that is simultaneously scholarly and eminently readable.

Four years into her time at 91±ŹÁÏ, she received an unexpected phone call from King.

“I was pretty flabbergasted; it turned out he just thought it was time we meet,” said Bicks. “I invited him to come talk to the students on campus about ‘Lisey’s Story’ and ‘On Writing,’ and he said yes, and it was just this magical first meeting I had with him. Seeing how passionate he was about talking to the students, how much he wanted to come back, and how much pleasure he took from it. It was really just a lovely way to meet him.”

Bicks was a longtime fan of King’s work, having read it since discovering and falling in love with it in the Castine Public Library when she was 12 years old (coming to the author’s work perhaps a touch early, as so many of us do). And while the old adage might say “never meet your heroes,” Bicks had the opposite experience. In fact, his generosity and kindness were a big reason why, when her year-long sabbatical approached, she reached out about this project.

“I felt comfortable enough to ask him and Tabitha,” she said. “I knew that they had just collected his manuscripts, a lot of them for the first time, and put them in a climate-controlled space attached to their home in Bangor, but that they hadn’t opened it up yet to people. I thought, ‘Well, this is opportunity knocking.’ An amazing opportunity if they say yes.”

It’s worth noting that Bicks wasn’t certain what this book was going to be when she made the ask. In essence, she had an idea to write about the books that scared her the most as a teenager and to try and understand how he crafted them.

“How did he craft these moments that are so iconic, that have stuck in the heads of so many people?,” Bicks said. “Fifty years after the fact, I can still talk to people my age who vividly remember Danny Glick at the window in ‘Salem’s Lot.’ And not just because of the movie. They actually remember the phrases that he wrote.

The question surrounding how he wrote these memorable moments was the seed that would eventually grow into “Monsters in the Archives.” Bicks narrowed her focus to the five aforementioned King works, the ones that hit her hardest and scared her the most when she first read them as a teenager.

“As a scholar, you’re taught not to bring your personal feelings into your work,” she said. “And I see the value in that to a point. But at the same time, I study gender and Shakespeare because I care about issues of gender. I really felt liberated to go in and say, ‘I’m just going to look at these because they’re the ones that scared me the most.’ I’m going to go revisit these stories. I’m going to reread them. I’m going to look at them with the eyes of a literature scholar.

“I’m bringing that view that I have that I didn’t have when I was a teenager,” she continued. “But I’m not going to lose my childhood reactions to it. I don’t want to lose what makes these such compelling stories, which is that they connect to our deepest fears. And everyone reacts differently. Everyone has a different story that scared them the most. At the same time, certain ones have staying power because they connect to issues we all face and fears we all have.

When Bicks finally ventured into the archives, the materials, particularly those that had yet to be examined, were “beyond my wildest dreams,” she said. 

What followed was months of research, with Bicks making the trip to visit the archives for at least a couple of eight-hour days per week, focusing on one of the five works at a time. 

Among the many joys Bicks derived from the process was the discovery of just how many different versions of these stories existed. Just as one example, there were three complete versions of “Pet Sematary,” all of which she worked her way through. Bicks — a self-professed slow reader — took something like three weeks to work her way through those three versions of “Pet Sematary.” After that? Right back into it.

“My days were filled with close reading, just going through these different versions,” she said. “First off, I just have to read and take notes and see what’s what. You can’t take photographs, so a lot of notes.”

One such change in “Pet Sematary” really captured Bicks’s imagination, as a slight alteration turned a good line into an iconic one, among the most memorable in the book.

“‘Dead is better,’ which is almost the hallmark of that book,” said Bicks. “It started as ‘Death is better.’ ‘Death is better’ is so different from ‘Dead is better.’  It still gives me chills. It is so much better and it’s one little change, right?

“And you can see why it became ‘Dead is better.’ It echoes, right? I was so pleased to find out that he still considers that the line that is the one that sticks with him the most from that novel,” she said.

Not every deep dive played out in the same way, however. For some, like “Night Shift,” the process involved following the collection’s various short stories through their publication histories. King was a working writer, selling stories to whatever outlets would take them, including a number of men’s magazines, which were once quite prolific publishers of short fiction. For others, like “Carrie,” Bicks would see a first draft that was significantly different from the book as it would ultimately be published.

But while some aspects of the editorial process varied somewhat from book to book, Bicks would discover that the writing process itself stayed largely the same. That included some surprising discoveries about the physical act of writing and the logistical and financial realities of such, including learning that King made a conscious effort to use as much of each sheet of paper as possible.

“He’s fitting it in as few pieces of paper as he can, because he had to,” she said. “I don’t think people today fully understand that. Paper costs money; he had to consider the materials needed in the creation of a book. The act itself had financial issues tied to it. You couldn’t just store it on a computer or in the cloud.”

That physical necessity also meant that there would occasionally be issues. Pages could get misplaced or ruined. There are a couple of incidents recounted in the book that feel genuinely harrowing, particularly to a fan of King’s work, tales of one book’s ending or another entire draft lost due to circumstance. The analog nature of it all is easy to forget until we’re confronted with the idea that a beloved horror classic might have simply disappeared because a briefcase got left in a cab or on a plane.

This book couldn’t have happened without the approval of the Kings. Bicks considers herself fortunate to have been given the opportunity — she’s the first scholar to be granted this kind of long-term ongoing access to the archive, something that simply would not have been possible without trust and transparency.

“I think he and Tabitha understood what I was trying to do,” she said. “I said to them, ‘I’m not interested in exposing your family secrets or psychoanalyzing deep, dark things.’ I’m coming at this as a literary scholar and as a fan. I really just wanted to look at these five works. I was very clear about my parameters. I wasn’t going in there to just paw through boxes.”

The end result of this lengthy literary odyssey is a very special book. It’s a work of thoughtful and compelling scholarship that is also reflective of one person’s personal journey with a beloved author. It is bibliographic and biographical all in one. “I’d like to think I did him proud,” said Bicks. “I know he likes the book. He read it and he said it’s ‘like a breath of fresh air,’ so that makes me feel really good. Like I got it right.”

Contact: Allen Adams, allen.adams@maine.edu

These small, vibrant fish, often associated with rocky habitats, are native to the Gulf of Maine. They are known to eat young lobster in the benthic stage, as well as small clams and snails.

Increasingly, the Maine Department of Marine Resources and commercial lobstermen are finding cunner caught in their traps. Staudinger said the lobstermen have shared photos of cunner with lobster eggs in their mouths and are concerned it’s impacting the fishery. 

The to study keystone species in the U.S., in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary. Selected projects, including Staudinger’s lobster research, are receiving funding, equipment and other support to advance innovative solutions to contemporary conservation challenges.

Lobster and cunner have coexisted for a long time, but this would be a new behavior and new dynamic within the rocky substrate where they reside.

Cunners are unique in that they have tiny teeth throughout their jawline, which helps them capture food from rocky surfaces. They use their teeth to crush shells and other food, making it hard to recover evidence. Because of this, Staudinger said her research team will be studying the contents of cunners’ stomachs using environmental DNA. 

While shifts in community composition, distribution and timing of occurrence are all well known ecological responses to environmental change, Staudinger said researchers have a poor understanding of how these responses affect predator-prey and competitive interactions among species.

“We don’t know if this behavior has been happening and gone unnoticed or if there is an environmental factor causing it to happen now,” she said. “We would like to gather evidence to determine how widespread it is happening, and the best way to do that is to work with the fishermen who are on the water every day and see them in their traps.”

If fishermen or other stakeholders find cunner with lobster eggs in their mouths, the Staudinger Lab is asking they use the provided QR code to share photos and information or send photos to 508-348-9039 or cunner.maine@gmail.com with the date the fish was captured and its location. More information is available on the lab’s website.

91±ŹÁÏ News recently spoke with Staudinger about what to expect from this upcoming research.

Do you suspect water temperature, population shifts and predator dynamics could be contributing to what’s happening between lobster and cunner?

These are all testable hypotheses that we’re going to be working through in this project. It’s possible there’s been a shift in timing. It could be a spatial distribution or a temporal shift that is bringing these two species together during certain life phases that they didn’t meet in previously. 

I found old historical papers that show cunner ate a lot of mollusks and other benthic invertebrates. One paper I found suggested that cunner really like to eat mussels, which have been less abundant in recent years. There is the possibility that they are exploring new food sources because others have decreased. They also might just be opportunistic, and that behavior could be leading them to take advantage of something they didn’t before.

Between equipment and personnel, what’s it going to take to find the answers?

We’re working with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to collect bycatch cunner in their ventless trap survey. When we bring those fish back to the lab, we’re doing a visual inspection of their guts and mouths, where we find and record all diet items that can be identified, such as broken shells of snails and sometimes small clams.

One fun fact about this fish is that they use their teeth to pluck organisms off vertical, complex surfaces. They also have teeth in the back of their mouths that allow them to crush things. The diet of this fish is very difficult to assess, because it can mash or chew its food with its teeth. Most other fish swallow their prey whole. So we’re using environmental DNA to detect lobster in the cunner’s stomach contents and get a full biodiversity panel of what they’ve been eating.

How might the results of this upcoming study translate to help groups like fishermen make informed management decisions?

We’re not seeing a blanket amount of evidence, so there may be hot spots where this interaction is more likely to occur. One potential result would be to show hot spots where populations of egg-bearing female lobster and cunner are overlapping. That would provide spatial information to fishermen to make informed choices about when and where they fish. There is also the possibility of developing trap modifications to exclude or deter cunner.

We might find out that this is not a widespread occurrence, which could help alleviate concerns. Regardless, understanding a species that we don’t yet have a lot of information about is always going to be advantageous.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

Speaking as part of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing Distinguished Lecture Series, co-hosted by the Office of the Vice President for Research, Michael F. Chiang said emerging technologies are making medical care more data-driven, consistent and accessible.

“Clinical practice and research are being rapidly reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and data science,” said Chiang, director of the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health and elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Following the lecture, 91±ŹÁÏ President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Giovanna Guidoboni, interim vice president for research and dean of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing, joined Chiang for a panel discussion moderated by Alon Harris, director of the Barry Family Center for Ophthalmic Artificial Intelligence and Human Health and professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Ferrini-Mundy said the rapid pace of innovation is reshaping not only research, but the future of health care.

“We’re living in a time when clinical practice and research across fields — particularly in the medical field — are being rapidly reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and data science,” she said.

Harris, who is also faculty within the Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering at 91±ŹÁÏ, reflected on the breadth of opportunity that exists across Maine and that 91±ŹÁÏ is uniquely positioned to lead.

“I had been here before, but during this visit I discovered there is so much more,” he said. “This place is so motivating, from the biological and biomedical labs, to the full scale automated vehicles and 3D printed homes with smart health sensors. The level of people we met and the research interests were truly thought-provoking.”

Guidoboni said Chiang’s work reflects the data-driven, interdisciplinary approach central to research at 91±ŹÁÏ. Over the past 16 years, Guidoboni and Harris have advanced mathematical modeling and data science, including studies on ocular blood flow, eye disease risk and noninvasive health monitoring, with the development of digital twins to help translate the advances of science into personalized medical care.

Their work reflects a broader shift toward using advanced analytics to better understand and treat complex health conditions.

“Dr. Chiang’s work exemplifies the power of combining clinical insight with data science to transform patient care,” Guidoboni said. “His leadership at the National Eye Institute is inspiring, especially as these innovations expand access and improve outcomes in rural communities like Maine.”

Chiang said advances in imaging have transformed ophthalmology from a largely descriptive field into one grounded in quantitative data, allowing clinicians to better measure and analyze disease.

He pointed to retinopathy of prematurity — a condition that can cause blindness in infants — as an example of how artificial intelligence can improve care. Studies have shown that even experts reviewing the same retinal images often disagree on whether disease is severe.

“That discrepancy is real,” Chiang said. “And this is where AI can help doctors make diagnoses that are more accurate and more consistent.”

He also highlighted emerging research suggesting that the eye may offer insights into broader health conditions. Because clinicians can directly observe blood vessels and nerves in the eye, researchers are exploring whether imaging can help predict diseases elsewhere in the body.

“If that’s really true and generalizable, then that’s remarkable,” he said, referring to studies linking eye imaging to neurological disease.

Chiang emphasized that progress in AI depends on access to large, high-quality datasets and collaboration across institutions.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” he said, cautioning that poor-quality data can limit the effectiveness of AI tools.

He also noted that technology could help reduce administrative burdens on physicians, who often spend significant time entering information into electronic health records.

“The technologies will help automate some of those things,” he said, “so doctors can spend more of their focus on the patient.”

Advances in technology are also reshaping how and where care is delivered, particularly in rural areas like Maine.

Chiang pointed to opportunities to expand care beyond traditional clinical settings through telehealth, remote monitoring and home-based tools, reducing the need for patients to travel long distances for care.

“Inpatient hospital stays are shorter than they ever used to be,” he said.

Those shifts, he added, raise broader questions about how physicians are trained and how healthcare systems adapt as medicine becomes increasingly data-driven.

As AI continues to evolve, Chiang said its impact will extend beyond diagnosis to reshape research, education and care delivery.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu

Giovanna Guidoboni, dean of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing and interim vice president for research, and David Neivandt, professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, were formally inducted during the AIMBE annual event on April 13 in Arlington, Virginia.

Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is highly selective, representing the top 2% of medical and biological engineers. Fellows are nominated, reviewed and elected by their peers in recognition of outstanding contributions to research, practice or education, as well as for advancing innovation in the field.

“This recognition reflects the collaborative work happening at the 91±ŹÁÏ to connect engineering, computing, and health,” Guidoboni said. “It underscores the importance of working across disciplines, bringing together faculty and students, to advance knowledge and improve disease outcomes..”

Guidoboni was recognized “for her application of mathematics and computational methods to understanding complex organ functions and identifying novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.”

Neivandt was honored “for outstanding achievement in the creation and translation of new biomaterial-based technologies and the expansion of biomedical engineering within Maine.”

“I’m honored to be elected by my peers to AIMBE,” Neivandt said. “This recognition highlights not only my work and that of my students, but also the growing strength of biomedical engineering in Maine and the opportunities we have to translate research into real-world impact.”

Their election marks a milestone for the 91±ŹÁÏ. To date, only three individuals based in Maine have been inducted into AIMBE, and Guidoboni and Neivandt are the first from the university to receive the distinction.

The recognition comes as the university continues to expand its focus on health, life sciences and engineering, including efforts to grow research and innovation capacity across disciplines.

AIMBE Fellows represent a global community of leaders across academia, industry, clinical practice and government. The organization includes some of the most accomplished figures in the field, including Nobel Prize laureates and members of the National Academies.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu

Ron Lisnet and Julie Arnold Lisnet’s now 43-year love affair with each other, and the 91±ŹÁÏ, did not begin with a thunderbolt from heaven back in 1982, when they met inside the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre. In fact, it started with a snide comment. 

“I was sitting there with a friend, being a snotty senior,” Julie said, remembering the day she first laid eyes on her future husband, “and Ron walks in, and I said, ‘Who is that geek?’” 

They were both there auditioning for a play. Ron was also in the middle of a fraternity beard-growing contest. It wasn’t going well. 

“Yeah, I was not winning,” Ron ’83 said. 

“There was a little patch here and a little patch there,” Julie ’82, ’85G, said. 

But Julie’s original assessment changed after Ron shaved and applied his stage makeup for the show, in which he played a fishnet shirt-wearing brothel owner. 

“I thought he had beautiful eyes,” Julie said, “I thought, ‘he’s actually a very handsome guy.’” 

A few months and dates later, they were inseparable. The two married July 14, 1984. 

“I think we’re the only Bear Pair to have met inside the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre,” Julie said. Bear Pairs are what 91±ŹÁÏ calls alumni couples, many of whom met as students on campus. 

And Ron and Julie are more than just a Bear Pair. Ron started working at the university 33 years ago, in 1993. Julie began teaching in the School for Performing Arts in 2002. Their daughter, Natalie Lisnet ’21, also works at 91±ŹÁÏ at the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

“Between us and our daughter, we have four [91±ŹÁÏ] degrees and a teaching certificate,” Julie said. “I don’t think we could get much more involved.” 

The whole family reunited inside the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre in January when Natalie directed both her parents in a production of “Pride and Prejudice” produced by the Ten Bucks Theatre Company, which Julie co-founded 25 years ago. 

Originally constructed in 1908, the Pavilion Theatre used to be a livestock judging arena. Julie said she remembers it housing sheep when she first lived on campus. At the end of the 1970s, it was converted into a theater. 

“When the theater department acquired it, I spent some time ripping out sheep mangers and shoveling lots of sheep poop,” Julie said. Now, both she and Ron are getting involved in the fundraising effort for another refurbishment. 

Growing up in Milbridge, Maine, Julie always knew she wanted to study theater. She applied to both the 91±ŹÁÏ and the University of Southern Maine and chose the one closest to home. After earning her bachelor’s degree in Orono in 1982, she continued on and earned a Master of Arts in Theatre in 1985. She now teaches in the same department. 

“I teach fundamentals of acting,” Julie said. “Occasionally, I teach a survey of dramatic literature, which means we read a lot of plays and talk about them. This year, for the first time, I’m also teaching in the Honors College. I’ve basically taken my acting class and turned it into a class focused on acting for Shakespeare.” 

Over the years, in addition to working at 91±ŹÁÏ, Julie has put her acting and directing talents to work at the Penobscot Theatre, Maine Theatre, Theatre of the Enchanted Forest, The Assembled Players, Marsh Island Stage, Maine Shakespeare Festival, Northern Lights Theatre, The Grand in Ellsworth and True North Theatre. 

In fall 2023 Julie directed “Crimes of the Heart” for Penobscot Theatre’s 50th season opener. In 2025, she directed “Matinicus: A Lighthouse Play” for the same company. The play told the story of real-life Mainer Abigail Burgess’ heroic exploits keeping her father’s lighthouse burning on a desolate rock, miles out to sea. 

In 1995, Julie appeared in a two-part network television miniseries based on a Stephen King short story called “The Langoliers.” She played the part of Aunt Vicki, who gets erased by a mysterious force. 

“Only her fillings and her glasses were found on the airplane when everybody that fell asleep disappeared, I think.” Julie said, struggling to remember the details. “My mother was very excited about it. I had 17 speaking lines, though that was cut down to just two in the final edit. My mother was very upset.” 

Ron was also in the film, sort of. “They had me put on this airline captain’s hat and drive around in the background,” he said. “We get a residual check for it every once in a while, for DVD rentals in Thailand, or something.” 

After growing up in Connecticut, Ron arrived at 91±ŹÁÏ to study forestry. He only auditioned for the play where he met Julie because a professor invited him. After graduating in 1983, Ron went to work for Bangor’s ABC television affiliate, WVII, where he eventually became sports director. After nine years, Ron brought his media production skills to the university. He’s now manager of visual media, overseeing all aspects of visual media for 91±ŹÁÏ, including photography and video production, as well as the university’s photo and video database and archives.

Ron has also been the play-by-play voice of 91±ŹÁÏ Men’s Basketball broadcasts for more than 30 years. He hosts the university’s “The Maine Question” podcasts, which he created in 2019, as well. The podcast explores how 91±ŹÁÏ students and researchers make sense of, and learn about, the world around them. Recent topics include “Can Zebrafish improve human health?” and “What is the future for manufacturing in Maine?” 

In 2025, the podcast won the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s Circle of Excellence bronze level award, with judges saying, “With its punchy, distinctive title, this zero-budget podcast has impressive engagement metrics and demonstrates how thoughtful, location-based audio storytelling can translate complex academic work into accessible content that connects with local and national audiences alike.” 

In addition to all their work at 91±ŹÁÏ, Ron and Julie have always found time to perform in plays together. 

“We’ve probably played husband and wife 15 or 20 times,” Ron said. “I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been in shows together.” 

Though they can’t remember the exact number, each agrees it’s in the dozens. For the past quarter century, the pair has appeared in an outdoor Shakespeare show put on by the Ten Bucks Theatre Company at Indian Trail Park in Brewer every summer. In 2010 Ten Bucks added Fort Knox in Prospect as a second regular Shakespeare venue. 

“Just about every anniversary we’ve had has usually been standing out in the field, getting bitten by bugs, rehearsing a show,” Ron said. 

One of their favorite shows they’ve performed together was the bickering couple in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” They said it was fun because they’d never speak that way to each other in real life. 

“I got to say, ‘You make me puke,’” Julie said. 

“That was a good one,” Ron said. 

Now, more than 40 years have passed since the couple first met at the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre. Julie no longer thinks Ron is a geek and his now-gray beard has come in nicely — and they have no plans to leave the theater life behind. 

“It’s enervating,” she said. “Theater is energizing. It goes through a cycle. You get to the week before opening — we call it hell week — and you don’t think you’re going to get through it. Then you get to the play, and it’s just magic. It’s like getting high without drugs.” 

Ron sometimes thinks about it in sports terms. 

“The similarities are quite striking. There’s a team chemistry kind of thing in both endeavors,” he said. “There’s nothing quite as cool as when you’re telling a good story, and it’s being told well, and either the place bursts into laughter or you can hear a pin drop. It’s a very inviting, alluring, intoxicating kind of feeling.” 

Julie said she can’t even imagine her life without Ron or theater, both at 91±ŹÁÏ and off campus. 

“I’ve never made a ton of money but it’s made me outrageously happy,” she said. 

Story by Troy R. Bennett 

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

Detecting and diagnosing stress and disease is a major challenge for aquaculture farms, where keeping fish happy helps them thrive. In fish, stress can be hard to detect before it becomes problematic, and testing for the source of stress usually requires physical examination or biopsy, which are invasive and often lethal.

An international team of researchers led by the 91±ŹÁÏ is trying to change this by developing noninvasive, rapid tests that can detect stress and disease without touching the fish, just the water in which they swim. 

Scientists from 91±ŹÁÏ, Dublin City University (DCU) and Queen’s University Belfast, plan to develop a new testing method that uses environmental RNA (eRNA) so aquaculture farmers can monitor fish health more quickly, efficiently and humanely.

“The goal is to get a window into the physiology of the organisms, their health in particular. By looking at what RNA is being shed from their tissues into the environment, eRNA can give us insights into what the fish are doing as biological machines,” said Michael Kinnison, 91±ŹÁÏ professor of evolutionary applications and director of the Maine Center for Genetics in the Environment.

Key to this research is a difference between environmental DNA (eDNA) and RNA. DNA within an organism’s cells does not change over an organism’s life or cell to cell — it is the blueprint of life. In contrast, RNA is what turns a general DNA blueprint into the diverse building blocks and processes that give various cell types and tissues their function. Because of this, the RNAs that an animal produces varies depending on where it is in its lifecycle, what is happening in its environment and what processes are underway in its body, such as stress or disease. When animal cells are naturally shed into the environment, their DNA and RNA become eDNA and eRNA, but the eRNA does not last as long. While this means eRNA is harder to detect, it also has the potential to provide a near real-time window into an animal’s condition. 

A major challenge for researchers is linking particular eRNA signals to specific stressors, but pilot data and recent research by others suggest it is possible. For example, researchers in Japan successfully . 

“This hasn’t been done for salmon yet, and it’s just exciting because it means that if we could use these RNAs, we wouldn’t have to kill fish to biopsy them. We might be able to figure out and treat disease before it gets really bad,” said Erin Grey, 91±ŹÁÏ assistant professor of aquatic genetics.

In addition to identifying what eRNA signals are tied to salmon stress and disease, the team will use CRISPR-Cas diagnostic technology to develop rapid tests for those eRNA signals. Similar to a COVID test, these tests could allow someone at an aquaculture farm to sample water and quickly identify issues. Early intervention in salmon farming has the potential to improve treatment of fish, allow for more targeted treatment and avoid economic damages that run into the hundreds of millions annually. 

The project is starting with small controlled systems like tanks, and as research progresses, the team hopes to expand to more open systems like net pens. Fish will be sampled in Maine and Scotland at 91±ŹÁÏ’s Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory and the University of Aberdeen’s Scottish Fish Immunology Centre. The initial focus will be on heat stress and furunculosis, two common challenges experienced by salmon farms. Researchers are working with the salmon aquaculture industry and fish health diagnostics providers to further identify what other pathogens or stressors would be most impactful for further investigation. 

While eRNA technology is in a nascent stage of development, this project brings together the expertise needed to rapidly advance its potential and put it in the hands of food producers. 

“Environmental RNA technology is still at an early stage of development, but its potential is significant. At Queen’s, we will apply advanced genomics and bioinformatics approaches to identify the molecular signatures of stress and disease in salmon,” said Paulo Prodöhl, professor of population and evolutionary genetics from the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast. “By working closely with colleagues at DCU and 91±ŹÁÏ, we aim to ensure that this technology moves from proof-of-concept to practical application for the aquaculture industry.”

This research is made possible by ,Ìę a tri-jurisdictional collaboration between the United States, Ireland and Northern Ireland which was officially launched in 2006. Under this program, the international project team receivesÌęfunding from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) grant titled “TRIPARTITE: Environmental RNA-based assessment of fish health – eRNA-Fish” (USDA Award# 2026-67016-45580). The team also received funding support from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM) in Ireland, and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) in Northern Ireland.

“This funding is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary research,” said DCU School of Biotechnology professor Anne Parle-McDermott. “By combining our molecular expertise with the knowledge and expertise at 91±ŹÁÏ and QUB, we are uniquely positioned to tackle one of aquaculture’s biggest challenges.”

Contact: Daniel Timmermann, daniel.timmermann@maine.edu

The work aims to understand how changes impact the effectiveness of long-running DMR surveys that inform fishery management. It will also provide a model for evaluating and adapting survey methods to inform effective, science-based assessment and management of culturally and economically important marine resources like lobster, herring and shrimp.

The first of three surveys to be examined was the Maine-New Hampshire Inshore Trawl Survey, which monitors a swath of species in the Gulf of Maine. Researchers analyzed survey data collected between 2000 and 2023.

The analysis, published in the journal and led by Hsiao-Yun Chang ’21G, a postdoctoral research associate at 91±ŹÁÏ, identified that a rise in bottom water and sea surface temperatures occurred between 2010 and 2012. Using that shift as a dividing point, the researchers compared conditions before and after the warming period to examine how seasonal species distribution and biodiversity changed across Maine’s inshore habitats.

Because the survey has been conducted consistently for more than two decades, it provided a strong foundation for analysis. The results show that many species are shifting deeper and farther northeast and that dominant, fishery-relevant species have become less diverse. At the same time, some species are more abundant during the spring.

Despite those changes, the survey has remained 90% consistent at capturing data on key species and providing robust data for stock assessment and fishery management.

“This study is a great example of collaboration between 91±ŹÁÏ and DMR and how our shared expertise and insights can support the ability of researchers, regulators and industry to adapt to a changing climate,” said Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Carl Wilson. “This milestone achievement will greatly improve Maine’s ability to monitor, conserve and increase the resilience of our coastal and marine ecosystems.”

Michelle Staudinger, associate professor of fisheries science at 91±ŹÁÏ, is leading the collaborative effort between 91±ŹÁÏ and the state agency. She is supporting Chang’s in-depth reviews of the three surveys while also completing a broader analysis of various DMR programs. 

Staudinger worked with DMR division director Jesica Waller and science program leads to complete a review of eight of the department’s monitoring and assessment programs. The goal was to better understand how the programs operate and where additional research and monitoring could help the state respond to environmental change.

“We know that there’s increased variability and changes in the distribution of species in the Gulf of Maine, and fishermen and other industry members have seen these changes over the last few decades,” Staudinger said. “If they know that the data that they’re helping collect is informing fishery management decisions, we want them to feel confident that the data is accurately representing the state of the stocks.”

With the analysis of the Maine-New Hampshire Inshore Trawl Survey complete, the researchers will next examine the Sea Urchin Dive Survey and the Ventless Trap Survey for lobster. The team selected these surveys because of their cultural and economic importance to Maine’s fisheries and will evaluate them using similar approaches.

Understanding change in biodiversityÌę

The trawl survey primarily tracks groundfish species such as haddock, flounder and cod and invertebrates such as squid that are caught by the net as it drags along the ocean floor. 

Chang said one of the most important findings of her analysis was a subtle, but critical shift in biodiversity. In ecology, biodiversity can be viewed in two ways: abundance, which is the total number of individual organisms, and biomass, the total weight of those organisms.

“In fisheries research, we prioritize biomass data because it reveals which species are the functional pillars of the ecosystem,” Chang said. “If biomass is distributed across several dominant species, the ecological risk is spread out. However, our study shows that the weight is becoming concentrated in fewer species, meaning the diversity of the catch is actually shrinking.”

In the spring, while individual abundance increased among species, biomass diversity decreased. This suggests that even as the headcount for species appears more balanced, the bulk of the community is becoming increasingly dominated by a smaller number of species.

Chang said this biodiversity trend mirrors the reality of Maine’s coastal economy. Just as the state’s fishing industry relies heavily on a small number of high-value species like lobster, the underwater ecosystem is becoming more concentrated in fewer species. 

Understanding these changes, she said, is critical for sustaining the marine environment and Maine’s blue economy.

“This work will not only support better fisheries management in the Gulf of Maine but will provide a template for researchers and managers around the world to support ocean stewardship,” Waller said. “Combined with the expertise of our staff, quantitative analyses like this one will guide our decision making in future survey design and data interpretation. This comprehensive, collaborative approach will allow us to bring data to industry and research partners to make well-informed decisions about the future of fisheries management.”

The initiative to analyze and update these surveys from the Department of Marine Resources is driven by the work of the Maine State Climate Council and its Coastal and Marine Working Group. 

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

AAAS Fellows are a group of scientists, engineers and innovators recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public. 

Other AAAS Fellows from 91±ŹÁÏ have included Susan Brawley, professor emerita of plant biology and marine ecology and 2012 AAAS Fellow; Joyce Longcore, research professor of fungal pathogens and 2012 AAAS Fellow; Daniel Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies and 2014 AAAS Fellow; and R. Dean Astumian, professor of physics and 2016 AAAS Fellow; and Heather Leslie, professor of marine sciences and 2022 AAAS Fellow.

“I am grateful to have my research recognized by this honorary fellowship. I’ve been lucky to have great collaborators and students throughout. I take this recognition as a challenge to do bolder, more innovative research and teaching to find the solutions so badly needed to enable humans to successfully coexist with nature before irreversible changes happen,” McGill said. 

McGill studies biodiversity at large scales of space and time across many species. His 

ideas have a wide-ranging impact in his field of macroecology. 

McGill’s work established the importance of prediction in ecology and identified unifying principles in the field. He also pioneered solutions to conceptual issues in his discipline related to the widely-used and vaguely-defined term biodiversity. He and his colleagues developed a series of scientifically measurable concepts to resolve this long-standing source of ambiguity in the field of ecology and provided concrete tools to better measure and assess biodiversity in management contexts.

Through the blog “Dynamic Ecology,” McGill and two co-authors shape the way research is conducted in labs across the planet and provide mentorship globally on successfully navigating academic cultures. The blog, with as many as 700,000 visits per year, is the most widely read in academic ecology.

In addition to being named a AAAS Fellow, McGill was named one of the most cited researchers in the world in 2019, 2020 and 2021 by Web of Science. His research is also featured in textbooks from high school to the graduate level. 

McGill is a lifetime honorary fellow of the Ecological Society of America, which is bestowed to approximately 250 of the organization’s 9,000 members. In 2023, he was awarded the Humboldt Research Award, one of the most prestigious scientific honors in Germany. He also received the  91±ŹÁÏ Presidential Research and Creative Achievement award in 2024, 2020 Outstanding Faculty Research Award from what is today 91±ŹÁÏ’s College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences. 

McGill, whose lab is part of the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station, has been a faculty member in the School of Biology and Ecology since 2010. He also holds a joint appointment in the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and a cooperating appointment in the Climate Change Institute. He served until recently as editor-in-chief of Global Ecology and Biogeography and formerly as associate editor of Frontiers of Ecology and Environment, American Naturalist, and Global Ecology and Biogeography. 

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

Dorothy Klimis-Zacas, professor of clinical nutrition at the 91±ŹÁÏ, recommends one half to one cup per day. She eats them alongside her morning oats or blends them into smoothies. 

She has spent her multi-decade career researching the health benefits of wild blueberries in relation to cardiometabolic health. Her work is featured in from a Cardiometabolic Health Symposium of experts hosted by the Wild Blueberry Association of North America in Bar Harbor in 2025. Twelve experts — including Klimis-Zacas — participated, their work spanning the fields of nutrition, food science, dietetics, nutrition metabolism and physiology, cardiovascular and cognitive function, gut health and microbiology. 

Blueberries contain polyphenols, which are bioactive compounds found in many berries, that have particularly powerful effects on vascular health. When compared to conventional blueberries, wild blueberries have twice the antioxidant content, 72% more fiber and 33% more anthocyanins — flavonoids related to the widespread health benefits of the berries, such as improved cardiometabolic health.

Research led by Klimis-Zacas was the first to show that wild blueberries reduce inflammation and vascular dysfunction by targeting the endothelium, the thin layer of cells lining blood vessels that regulates their contraction and relaxation. In preclinical studies, her team found that animals with hypertension and obesity showed reduced inflammation and improved vascular health after consuming wild blueberries for six weeks.

Further analysis revealed that a wild blueberry diet alters vascular structure via glycoproteins — key molecules involved in endothelial signaling processes. These structural changes not only improved endothelial function, but also made the endothelium more resilient to high blood lipids and high blood pressure changes.

“If your endothelium becomes dysfunctional, then everything starts going downhill,” Klimis-Zacas said.

Her lab has also investigated how wild blueberries influence local and systemic inflammation in metabolic syndrome, as well as glucose, lipid metabolism and gut health, to have a greater understanding of blueberries’ potential role in supporting overall metabolic function.

What’s the best way to eat wild blueberries?

Wild blueberries — whether fresh, frozen or freeze-dried — can all provide health benefits. Frozen berries are a convenient option because they are flash-frozen shortly after harvest, which helps preserve their nutrients, and are widely available in grocery store freezer aisles. Freeze-dried berries also retain beneficial compounds and are highly bioavailable.

Blending wild blueberries into smoothies is effective, as breaking down the berry’s skin helps the body absorb more of its bioactive compounds. Studies have also shown they can be baked into muffins and other foods without significantly reducing their health benefits.

Pairing wild blueberries with other nutritious ingredients that have acidity, such as orange, lemon or lime juice, further supports the body in absorbing their bioactive compounds. Adding cinnamon is another option, as it has been associated with supporting healthy blood glucose levels.

Who benefits most from eating wild blueberries?

Wild blueberries offer benefits for people with a range of chronic health conditions, particularly those related to inflammation and cardiovascular health. Klimis-Zacas’ clinical studies, in collaboration with the University of Milan’s DeFENS-Division of Human Nutrition, have examined blueberries’ positive effects on individuals with vascular dysfunction, including people who smoke or are hypertensive, hyperlipidemic, diabetic, obese or have other inflammatory conditions.

Because wild blueberries contain natural carbohydrates, individuals with diabetes may benefit from more moderate portions, such as limiting intake to about half a cup per day.

Contact: Ashley Yates, ashley.depew@maine.edu

“The Midnight Work,” Jennifer Moxley’s eighth book of poetry, contemplates these changes as she enters and experiences midlife. Woven with nostalgia and tension, the professor of English at the 91±ŹÁÏ connects her immediate present and recent past through conversations with the more distant past or even the ancient world through lyrics and epistles, or letter poems.

“This book deals a lot with a contemplation of life at midlife, a little past midlife and thinking about a sort of metaphysical disquiet when looking back,” said Moxley. “There is a lot of nostalgia in this book and trying to figure out what it means to be in this world right at this moment.”

In the lyric poem “1900,” readers join Moxley and her husband on a summer expedition to a Hannaford grocery store amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We feel the frustration, fear and tired novelty of the situation. The poem grows tendrils as Moxley reflects on her “mother’s mother,” Leola Isabel Warnock Freeman, a portrait painter based in the American southwest. 

“1900” demonstrates how Moxley’s research feeds her emotive lines. A Campbell’s soup can emblazoned with a gold medallion, awarded the same year as her grandmother’s birth, leads her to lament that the internet, where she discovered that fact, knows more about her grandmother than she does. The poem continues as she considers the life of Helen Gahagan Douglas, an American actor and politician, also born in 1900; as well as Nathalie Sarraute, a Russian-born French writer born that same year. From that node of connection through time, Moxley weaves together elements of their lives and themes in their respective works. 

Moxley’s navigation through midlife, both in her life and in the book, is guided in part by Horace, a Roman poet from the first century, and Tao Qian, a Chinese poet from the fourth and fifth centuries. 

“When I started reading these poets around 2016-15, they just really spoke to where I was in my own life,” said Moxley. “They helped me negotiate the move into late middle age, which is a form of hell, I suppose.” 

The poets interrogate what it means to live a meaningful life in their work. “Both of them land on similar answers to that question, which is not the accumulation of material goods,” said Moxley. “It’s moderation, our relationship to good friends and wine and poetry and cultivating the land. Not ambition — worldly ambition — but quiet contemplation.”

Horace’s “Epistles” also inspired Moxley to write her own, ushering in a stylistic change from the lyrical voice of her previous works. Moxley’s epistles address the living and dead, close friends and complete strangers. The writing of the epistles was not a planned process, but a reflective one. Each epistle wound through her memories of the person it was written for, and of her own life. Moxley explained that she hoped the reader would find, “Some space that opens up in their own lives for reflection and contemplation,” in the same way she did.

While there is immense value in this contemplation, Moxley also acknowledges how taxing it can be. 

“Whenever you think about lost time, whenever you think about lost worlds, whenever you think about all the people you have loved who are no longer here, it’s sad,” said Moxley. “The emotional spaces that the poems put me in were sometimes very hard to recover from.”

As “The Midnight Work” debuts, Moxley is already looking forward, researching and composing her next work. She acknowledges, though, that for her readers, everything is just starting. 

“I would want them to have the experience that I had when I read Horace or Tao Qian, which is to feel some space that opens up in their own lives for reflection and contemplation and existential depth,” Moxley said. 

At the same time, she said there should be joy in the experience, adding that “I hope that I would bring delight in the reading of some of those moments.”

Contact: Daniel Timmermann, daniel.timmermann@maine.edu

Since 1963, the has presented this honor to a 91±ŹÁÏ faculty member who exemplifies the highest qualities of teaching, research and public service. Faculty members widely recognize this award as the most prestigious faculty honor at the university.

Musavi is an internationally recognized scholar, educator and academic leader whose career at 91±ŹÁÏ spans more than four decades of sustained excellence. A professor of electrical and computer engineering, he has played a transformative role in strengthening engineering and computing education at 91±ŹÁÏ while elevating the university’s research reputation at the state and national levels.

In the late 1980s, long before artificial intelligence (AI) and automation became household terms, Musavi helped pioneer early educational and research opportunities that introduced students to foundational knowledge now central to today’s AI-driven world. Many of his students went on to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of AI technologies in industry, research and public-sector organizations.

Musavi’s scholarly contributions span a wide range of high-impact areas, including AI, neural networks, smart grid and power systems, robotics, computer vision and STEM education. He has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on more than 50 externally funded research projects, securing nearly $13 million in support from leading organizations such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy and numerous industry partners. His work has resulted in an extensive publication record with more than 2,700 citations and an h-index of 22, demonstrating the lasting influence of his contributions across multiple disciplines.

Musavi is widely recognized for his profound impact as an educator and mentor. Across his career, he has supervised and supported more than 100 graduate and undergraduate students in research projects — building pipelines of talented engineers, scientists and innovators who now contribute to the workforce in Maine and beyond.

He has developed numerous undergraduate and graduate courses and founded multiple educational and research laboratories, creating hands-on learning environments that allow students to gain real-world experience in emerging technologies.

Musavi’s dedication to professional service has earned him long-standing recognition. He received the 2014 Engineering Service Award and has been a committed advocate for engineering education and outreach throughout the state. He also served as president and board member of the Maine Engineering Promotion Council, helping organize Maine’s annual Engineering Expos, which bring together students, educators and industry partners to promote engineering pathways and innovation.

In addition to his service at the university, Musavi has made a lasting impact on K-12 STEM education, as well as on Maine’s industry and economic development. Working closely with a team of Bangor High School teachers, he helped develop the first STEM Academy in Maine, a program that later became a national model for STEM-focused secondary education.  

Through his award-winning SMART Institute, Musavi helped cultivate a generation of student innovators. Alumni from the program have earned national recognition, including achievement in the Intel Science Talent Search and features in National Geographic. For his contributions to strengthening K-12 STEM education, he received theK-12 STEM Literacy Educator-Engineer Partnership Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ U.S. unit (IEEE-USA) in 2014.

Musavi also developed close partnerships with companies across the state, helping expand Maine’s engineering workforce and providing educational opportunities to support industry growth and advanced technical expertise.

A formal presentation of this honor will be made at the 91±ŹÁÏ Alumni Association’s annual Alumni Achievement Awards event on Friday, May 1, at the Collins Center for the Arts.  

Founded in 1875, the 91±ŹÁÏ Alumni Association is a nonprofit organization governed by alumni, serving over 100,000 91±ŹÁÏ alumni worldwide. Its mission is to strengthen 91±ŹÁÏ by inspiring lifelong connection, passion and engagement among its alumni community. For more information about the 91±ŹÁÏ Alumni Association and its Alumni Achievement Awards event, visit .

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu 

“Our work follows the rhythm of the weather,” said Lisa Hanscom, co-owner and manager at Welch Farm in Roque Bluffs. “The Jonesboro station helps us know the right time to tend our wild blueberries, and with the Maine Mesonet, we’ll have the real-time data we need to protect our crop and keep our farm thriving.”

The project stems from a 2020 needs assessment led by Extension wild blueberry specialist Lily Calderwood. Only 34% of surveyed growers reported using weather-based decision tools at the time, but 86% said they wanted to in the future. Existing networks, like Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) for aviation, NOAA’s Cooperative Observer Program, Maine Forest Service fire weather sites and various personal stations, offer valuable data. However, maintenance can be uneven, access and quality of the data vary and most lack soil temperature, moisture sensors or the ability to detect temperature inversions, measurements that are critical for crop management.

“The right data at the right moment turns guesswork into good decisions,” said Calderwood, who is co-leading the project along with Maine State Climatologist Sean Birkel. “A farm-level network will help growers decide when to irrigate, when a spray is justified and when to protect against frost. That improves yields, decreases inputs and saves time during the most stressful parts of the season.”

The Maine Mesonet project is installing a total of 26 ten- and three-meter stations across all 16 counties, prioritizing agricultural hubs. Three stations are planned each for Washington (wild blueberry) and Aroostook (potato) counties and other areas of high agricultural production, especially where gaps in weather data exist. Sites are also planned for 91±ŹÁÏ Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station (MAFES) farms and cooperating private and public lands.

Detailed weather and environmental data from the network will be accessible on the Maine Climate Office website, overseen by co-principal investigator and Maine State Climatologist Sean Birkel. The network’s localized measurements are expected to improve short-term forecasting, enhance Integrated Pest Management (IPM) decision models, guide irrigation and frost protection, and sharpen the timing of pesticide applications. Project leaders expect the wild blueberry and potato sectors to see measurable benefits within two growing seasons of deployment.

“Maine is seeing warmer temperatures, and in the past decade the state has also been variously impacted by drought,” said Birkel. “A Mesonet gives us high-resolution, real-time observations to track these shifts in the field throughout each season. Additional observations can improve local forecasts, making them more useful to farmers. These observations will also help statewide drought monitoring and planning.”

The effort also supports statewide priorities to expand outreach and enhance weather monitoring. Soil-moisture data from the network will be used by the Maine Drought Task Force and the U.S. Drought Monitor. The information will also be distributed to national companies that use weather data to predict larger trends in weather and storms, resulting in more accurate models.

The budget for the project is $3.5 million, which includes funding for 26 stations and software, plus one full-time technician to install, maintain and manage the system and decision-support tools. Funding for the Maine Mesonet was secured for the 91±ŹÁÏ System in Fiscal Year 2024 through the Congressionally Directed Spending process by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, now chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, with support from U.S. Sen. Angus King.

Maine is collaborating with the New York State Mesonet, operated by the University at Albany, to manage the large amount of data generated by the 26 stations. New York specialists will ensure the quality and accuracy of the data before sending it back to Maine. This collaboration highlights the growing trend of mesonet networks across the country working together to share knowledge, standardize practices and deliver better weather information to the public.

“We’re excited to launch this first-of-its-kind partnership between two statewide mesonet networks,” said New York State Mesonet Director June Wang. “Our team is proud to demonstrate how we can make sharing data easier, more efficient and more valuable for end users. We look forward to extending these services to additional weather networks in the future.”

For Maine farmers facing meteorological volatility, the Mesonet promises something simple but powerful: timely, trustworthy, farm-level weather intelligence.

Contact: Lily Calderwood, lily.calderwood@maine.edu

In the years since the Netflix series “Bridgerton” burst onto the scene, it has become a cultural phenomenon, a runaway success featuring Regency-era romance and palace intrigue wrapped in moments of bodice-ripping enthusiasm and unapologetic anachronism.

However, thanks to the new book,” a collection of essays edited by 91±ŹÁÏ professor of philosophy Jessica Miller and published by Wiley-Blackwell, we see that the series also provides an interesting lens through which to look at larger ideas.

The book is the latest entry in Blackwell’s ongoing Philosophy and Pop Culture series, which features essay collections that use a vast array of films, television shows and video games to highlight philosophical questions. The essays are conversational in tone and intended to be accessible to both general readers and devoted fans, allowing everyone to engage with the show in a whole new way.

“Bridgerton and Philosophy” features 22 essays exploring how the Netflix show and its prequel “Queen Charlotte” bring timeless philosophical questions to life — sometimes in a ballroom, sometimes in a bedroom and always with style.

Jessica Miller isn’t quite Lady Whistledown — or is she? — but the book she has assembled certainly uncovers some of the hidden truths regarding the people and places of “Bridgerton.”

91±ŹÁÏ News sat down with Miller for the following Q&A:

How did you come to participate in this project? What made ‘Bridgerton’ an apt framework for it?

“Bridgerton and Philosophy” is part of a series that introduces philosophy to lay audiences through popular culture. I have enjoyed writing essays for previous volumes. I thought “Bridgerton,” which is both a bestselling book series and a very popular Netflix show, would be a great addition. We can enjoy “Bridgerton” on one level as a swoony, opulent fantasy, but beneath the surface it touches on many important issues. 

What are some of the benefits of viewing philosophical concepts through this sort of pop cultural lens?

Philosophy can seem impractical, outdated, or intimidating. But it’s none of those things, really. Philosophers have always been interested in the same questions everyone is curious about: What is happiness? What is love? What is friendship? Learning about philosophy through pop culture helps people see that philosophy is for now and philosophy is for everyone. 

How long does it take for a book like this to come together? What does the process look like?

I pitched the idea to the publisher in spring 2024, so about two years. We put out a call for proposals, and had an amazing response from scholars all over the world. I worked closely with the authors to make sure the writing was insightful and witty. Their enthusiasm as fans really comes through. I love the idea that “Bridgerton” fans who get into online debates about 


[Spoiler alert: If you haven’t watched the first season, you may want to stop reading here.]


 whether Penelope should be forgiven for lying to Eloise about her secret identity as Lady Whistledown now have a thoughtful essay to read that brings philosophers’ work on deceit and moral repair into the discussion.Ìę

I imagine there are a lot of surprises that can spring from a collection such as this, but was there an essay that particularly surprised you and/or subverted your expectations?

Because “Bridgerton” is a romantic drama, I knew that topics like sex, marriage, and love would be ripe for analysis. But we also have essays on surprising topics like the sport of boxing and the significance of the Duke of Hastings’ stutter. And a few of the essays tackle public reaction to the show, especially in the way it addresses race, weight bias, and queer identity. One essay explores how nature is used in the show to help story arcs, reflect emotions, and feed innermost desires. Characters get up to all sorts of mischief in those Regency gardens!

Were you a fan of the show before working on the book? Any favorite character(s)?

I was a fan of Julia Quinn’s “Bridgerton” novels, and then, of course, of the show. Romance is often dismissed as unrealistic, bad, or just “women’s stuff.” But romance has a vast audience and the potential to do important cultural work. In very different ways, philosophy and romance are asking some of the same questions, about how to live a meaningful life.

One of my favorite characters is Lady Danbury. Her traumatic backstory is told in “Queen Charlotte,” the “Bridgerton” prequel series, and she remains an important character throughout “Bridgerton.” I admire her resilience, her kindness, and her wit.

Contact: Allen Adams, allen.adams@maine.edu

As conservationists work to preserve these species, the 91±ŹÁÏ assistant professor Christina Murphy asked herself if there was an easier way to identify threats to fish before they become endangered. 

After five years of data collection, programming and testing, Murphy and her colleagues developed a computer model that identifies potential threats to more than 10,000 freshwater species worldwide. Encouragingly, the majority of species accounted for in the model could still be safeguarded before becoming endangered, like Maine’s Arctic Char (Salvelinus alpinus) and certain char populations around in the world. 

The model identifies threats beyond traditional assessments by analyzing 52 variables, including damming, water abstraction, habitat degradation, pollution, economics and invasive species. Using publicly available data, the tool can make identifying and protecting freshwater fish more cost-effective. 

“This uses new metrics to identify what is working to keep species from being listed,” said Murphy, who also serves as assistant unit leader for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. “Managers may be able to protect a lot of fish.” 

The tool allows for more proactive conservation by recognizing ecological, environmental and socioeconomic patterns that are working for fish, helping wildlife stewards implement targeted protections that benefit multiple species at once.

“The big takeaways are the socioeconomic impact on conservation potential, and that we are better at identifying what works for species than what doesn’t,” Murphy said “Managers can set up new conservation programs based on what has worked in the past because a lot of species share what works.” 

Researchers incorporated data from 12 publicly available sources, the majority from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. 

They programmed and trained artificial intelligence to analyze millions of nonlinear connections among species, determining which are in immediate danger and why. Users can examine the conditions driving risks and assess whether those threats exist for species not yet in immediate danger. Researchers also validated the model against existing assessments. 

“Our results suggest conservation works like human health: the signals of ‘well-being’ are often more consistent than the many pathways to illness. For freshwater fishes, safe conditions tend to be predictable, while extinction risk can come from countless combinations of threats,” shared co-author J. Andres Olivos, postdoc at Oregon State University.

Murphy and her colleagues believe their tool can be used in conservation and regional planning efforts, and hope it can be leveraged to design new models for protecting birds, trees and other flora and fauna. 

“People sometimes go in to protect species when it’s already too late. With our model, decision makers can deploy resources in advance before a species becomes imperiled,” said Ivan Arsmendi, an associate professor in Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences. 

Murphy began the project in 2020 as a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State, where she worked with Arismendi and Olivos in collaboration with scientists from the USGS, the U.S. Forest Service and the University of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. The team shared their findings in a research paper published in the journal .Ìę

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

Allan is an internationally recognized leader in the study of hazing and its prevention. She directs the Hazing Prevention Research Lab (HPRL) at 91±ŹÁÏ and is principal and founder of the research group , where she leads the Hazing Prevention Consortium (HPC).

The consortium is a pathbreaking research-to-practice initiative that has worked with nearly 40 colleges and universities to implement prevention efforts while building an evidence base for successful hazing prevention strategies. 

Allan was the lead investigator for the 2008 National Study of Student Hazing, the most comprehensive examination of hazing in the U.S., and currently leads its re-launch. 

“This award reflects not only my own work but the collective efforts of many collaborators, students, practitioners and survivors whose insights and courage have shaped my scholarship,” Allan said in a . “I am especially grateful to colleagues and graduate students at the 91±ŹÁÏ, whose curiosity, care and commitment continue to inform my research and the work of the Hazing Prevention Research Lab. I also extend sincere thanks to the StopHazing team, whose partnership, innovation and commitment demonstrate the transformative potential of research-to-practice collaboration.”

Allan consulted members of Congress and their staff on the bipartisan Stop Campus Hazing Act, which was signed into law in December 2024 and requires colleges and universities to implement comprehensive hazing prevention programs and to publicly report incidents in their annual campus security reports, known as Clery Reports. 

, a partnership between the 91±ŹÁÏ College of Education and Human Development, the University of Washington Information School, StopHazing and Jolayne Houtz and Hector Martinez — who lost their son Sam to hazing in 2019 — recently that just 44% of institutions nationwide met the new requirements in the law’s first year.

Allan will accept the George D. Kuh Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature and/or Research at the 2026 NASPA Annual Conference, March 7-11 in Kansas City. 

91±ŹÁÏ News spoke to Allan about the current state of hazing prevention research, upcoming projects and how to increase transparency around hazing on college campuses.

Congratulations on your recent award. is well-known in the world of higher education for his work on student engagement and its impact on learning. How do you think your research reflects this commitment to ensuring students feel connected to the institutions where they choose to go to college?

George Kuh helped the field understand that student success is not simply about access to higher education or preparedness, it is about engagement. His work reminds us that what students experience in college matters profoundly. 

My research on campus culture, climate and hazing is rooted in that same premise. Belonging and connection are essential to engagement. However, the connection can be distorted. Hazing often masquerades as a pathway to belonging and a so-called “tradition” that builds community in groups. But in practice, hazing undermines trust, safety and the very conditions necessary for meaningful engagement and learning.

Over the past two decades, my work has focused on understanding how peer cultures can shape students’ experiences, for better or worse. If engagement is about investing time and energy in educationally purposeful activities, then we must ensure that the environments in which students invest that energy are healthy, ethical and aligned with institutional values. My scholarship reflects Kuh’s commitment by asking not only whether students are involved, but how and to what end. True engagement should elevate student well-being, not endanger it.

As you said, you now have more than two decades of research on campus culture and climate, including hazing and hazing prevention. When you consider this body of work, what are some practices that higher education institutions can implement to prevent hazing and shift culture away from these harmful behaviors?

Based on our research and our work in the field with campus staff and administrators, we know that hazing prevention is strengthened when certain strategies are in place. 

First, there has to be visible commitment from campus administration and leadership when it comes to hazing prevention. 

Second, a coalition-based approach that brings different organizations, groups and populations together to focus on campus-wide implementation is needed to ensure you cast as wide a net as possible. 

Third, you need research-based education and training to inform students, faculty and staff about the potential harm from hazing, how they can identify it and what they can do to report it and prevent it. 

Fourth, beyond education and training, campus communities need to establish fortifying initiatives that cultivate healthy group and team environments including ethical leadership development. 

Fifth, you need transparency and accountability supported by institutional policy that is consistently communicated and enforced.

The 2008 , which you led with former 91±ŹÁÏ colleague Mary Madden, is perhaps your most well-known work of research. You’re currently working to update this study. Where are you at in that process, and what do you hope to learn from relaunching the study?

The 2008 National Study of College Student Hazing remains the most comprehensive examination of hazing in a postsecondary context. Since then, the higher education landscape has changed significantly, and we’re eager to collect data to provide a more current national snapshot of hazing in the context of postsecondary education. 

We are now relaunching the study with an updated survey, expanded institutional participation and stronger attention to intersectional experiences. Our goal is to establish a new national baseline that reflects contemporary realities. 

We hope to learn more about the nature and extent of college student hazing experiences in the U.S., as well as the extent to which, if any, college hazing behavior has shifted over time. We’re also hoping to learn about students’ attitudes and beliefs regarding hazing, as well as their knowledge and attitudes toward reporting, intervening and preventing it. 

Without updated national data, colleges and universities are attempting to address a dynamic problem with outdated intelligence. The new data will help the field continue to move from reactive response to informed prevention.

You consulted on the federal Stop Campus Hazing Act. According to your partners at HazingInfo, less than half of higher education institutions nationwide met the law’s new reporting requirements. What can be done to increase reporting and transparency as required by the law?

The passage of the Stop Campus Hazing Act was a significant step forward, and many colleges and universities are working hard to bolster their hazing prevention efforts and transparency. However, compliance gaps show that legislation alone does not guarantee implementation. 

To increase reporting and transparency, federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Education can provide further guidance to support implementation and can bolster compliance by offering technical assistance to institutions. Accrediting bodies and state systems can help by integrating compliance into their review processes. 

Colleges and universities themselves should clearly designate personnel responsible for hazing transparency compliance, rather than dispersing responsibility. Public accountability also matters. When transparency data are visible and comparable, institutions have a greater incentive to meet standards. Finally, we will continue to provide education about the role transparency and accountability play in prevention. 

The legislation serves as the floor, not the ceiling, of what institutions of higher education can do to shift hazing culture and cultivate environments for healthy leadership and belonging. Transparency is not punitive; it is protective. Families, students and campus communities deserve to know how institutions respond to harm. 

Is there data or information that you can take away from the 44% of institutions that did report hazing incidents?

The fact that 44% of institutions of higher education reported hazing incidents tells us at least two important things. First, hazing is occurring and being documented. Reporting does not necessarily indicate an increase in incidence or a more dangerous campus than others; in many cases, it signals a functioning system where students are coming forward and institutions are responding. 

Second, variation across institutions highlights differences in infrastructure and culture. Where reporting systems are clear, accessible and trusted, transparency is higher. Where hazing reporting is absent from institutional websites, students and families may not know where to turn. 

The early data suggest that transparency itself may be a proxy for institutional commitment. Over time, we can examine whether institutions that meet reporting requirements also demonstrate stronger prevention outcomes. That is one of the critical next steps in our research agenda. 

Contact: Casey Kelly, casey.kelly@maine.edu 

Phones, laptops, tablets, smart watches — they’re a part of everyday life, simplifying access to entertainment, information and each other. Ongoing advancements in generative artificial intelligence are giving these technologies even more of an edge. Whether someone asks their device where dinosaurs lived or how accelerated their pulse is, AI can get the information quicker than technology has ever been able to do. Accuracy, on the other hand, is still in question. 

Generative AI has the power to influence how the past is represented and visualized. Researchers across the country are exploring this phenomenon, including the 91±ŹÁÏ’s Matthew Magnani. 

Magnani, assistant professor of anthropology, worked with Jon Clindaniel, a professor at the University of Chicago who specializes in computational anthropology, to create a model grounded in centuries of scientific theory and scholarly research. They asked two chatbots to create images and narratives depicting daily life of Neanderthals and published their findings in the journal . 

They found that accuracy rests on AI’s ability to access source information. In this instance, the images and narratives referenced outdated research.

Why is this study important? 

Magnani and Clindaniel tested four different prompts 100 times each, using DALL-E 3 for image generation and ChatGPT API (GPT-3.5) for narrative generation. Two prompts didn’t request scientific accuracy, while the other two did. Two were also more detailed, including context such as what the Neanderthals should be doing or wearing. 

Their goal was to understand how biases and misinformation about the past are present in normal, daily use of AI.

“It’s broadly important to examine the types of biases baked into our everyday use of these technologies,” Magnani said. “It’s consequential to understand how the quick answers we receive relate to state-of-the-art and contemporary scientific knowledge. Are we prone to receive dated answers when we seek information from chatbots, and in which fields?”

Magnani and Clindaniel started the study in 2023. In just two years, GenAI has moved from the horizon of technological advancement to the forefront of modern society. If this study were repeated now, Magnani said he hopes chatbots would better incorporate recent scientific research. 

“Our study provides a template for other researchers to examine the distance between scholarship and content generated using artificial intelligence,” Magnani said.

Clindaniel added that AI can be a great tool for processing large pools of information and finding patterns, but it needs to be engaged with skill and attention to ensure it’s grounded in scientific record. 

What did GenAI get wrong?

The skeletal remains of Neanderthals were first depicted in 1864. Since then, the scientific community has shifted and conflicted over details surrounding the species, from how their clothes fit to how they hunted. This lack of concrete understanding and knowledge about Neanderthals is what made them an ideal topic to test the accuracy and sourcing ability of GenAI.

The images generated during this study depicted Neanderthals as they were believed to look over 100 years ago: a primitive human-related species with archaic features more similar to chimpanzees than humans. In addition to large quantities of body hair and stooped upper bodies, the images also lacked women and children.

The narratives underplayed the variability and sophistication of Neanderthal culture as is understood in contemporary scientific literature. About half of all narration generated by ChatGPT didn’t align with scholarly knowledge, rising to over 80% for one of the prompts.

In both the images and narratives, references to technology — basketry, thatched roofs and ladders, glass and metal — were too advanced for the time period. 

Magnani and Clindaniel were able to identify from what sources the chatbots were compiling information by cross referencing the images and narratives with different eras of scientific literature. They found that ChatGPT produced content most consistent with the 1960s and DALL-E 3 the late 1980s and early 90s. 

“One important way we can render more accurate AI output is to work on ensuring anthropological datasets and scholarly articles are AI-accessible,” Clindaniel said.

Copyright laws established in the 1920s limited access to scholarly research until open access began in the early 2000s. Moving forward, policies surrounding access to scholarly research will directly influence AI generation and, in turn, the way in which the past is imagined.

“Teaching our students to approach generative AI cautiously will yield a more technically literate and critical society,” Magnani said. 

This is one of a series in which Magnani and Clindaniel are exploring the use of AI in archeological research and topics. 

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

That pattern is not unique to Maine. For more than 20 years, 91±ŹÁÏ professor of marine sciences Heather Leslie has collaborated with an international group of researchers  studying how coastal communities respond to environmental, economic and political pressures in northwest Mexico. 

Leslie’s research program, based at 91±ŹÁÏ’s Darling Marine Center, examines how marine ecosystems and the people who are part of them are responding and adapting to environmental and socioeconomic changes.

Supported by the National Science Foundation and other funders, Leslie and her colleagues have shared data, resources and fieldwork across regions, producing a series of co-authored studies examining how the ecological and social characteristics of fisheries and fishing communities shape their vulnerability and adaptability to change, particularly in northwest Mexico.

Together, the research points to a commonality across coastlines, even those as distant as Maine and northwest Mexico: when fishing communities lose variety, in species or in business structure, their resilience declines.

Leslie recently spoke with 91±ŹÁÏ News about what the team’s research reveals about risk, resilience and the future of coastal livelihoods. Her comments have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Is having fewer species a hardship for fishing communities?

To focus on the analogy with New England, it used to be that 25 or 30 years ago fishermen in coastal Maine were not just fishing for lobster. They were fishing for finfish and shrimp in the winter time and lobster in the summer. Now more than 70% of fished value on the coast of Maine comes from one single species: the American lobster.

While that’s been a really lucrative and biologically productive fishery over the last couple of decades, we’re also seeing that it can really constrain people’s opportunities to rely so heavily on one species.  

There are a lot of similarities between the communities you study in Mexico and the ones here in Maine, but what are the differences?

One thing that’s different between the two regions is the biological variety. As we move toward the tropics, we tend to see a greater variety of animals and other organisms. Think coral reefs. The poles don’t necessarily have that wide array of species, and we see that when we look at what people fish in Maine versus Mexico. In Maine, particularly now, we have a fairly small set of species that are harvested commercially and recreationally, whereas in Mexico in some places, folks are catching tens of different species each year.

However, we have observed that for better or worse, Mexico, in many places, is starting to look like Maine. And what I mean by that is the number of targeted species is declining, and where and how people can fish is becoming more constrained.

The group’s recent research references the organization of fisheries and how that plays a role in their success. Can you explain the different ways fishermen organize?

In some instances — and this is true in Maine, as well as northwest Mexico — fishing businesses and people are organized as cooperatives and share decisions, expenses and revenues. Another typical way that people organize themselves to fish is through privately held businesses, where one person is leading and financing the operation and hiring other people to fish. 

There also are smaller cooperatives that aren’t as well resourced as the larger ones. And then there are folks who fish and sell their fish on their own; this owner-operator model is the one that most people think of when they think of the coast of Maine and lobsters.

How people organize themselves to fish can play a big role in how they’re able to respond to disturbances in the fishery. We were able to document through close work with communities in different parts of Baja California Sur that individuals who are part of fishing cooperatives have different sources of resilience to change than individuals who are working for private businesses or on their own.

Is one type of organization better than another?

There are financial and logistical advantages to being part of a cooperative, and that’s why they are so prevalent in regions we’ve studied. But there’s also liabilities that cooperatives face that people working in these other organizational structures are not exposed to. One of those liabilities is that large cooperatives tend to have a smaller set of species that they’re focused on, in part because they receive concessions, or exclusive access to specific fishing places, for high value species like lobster.

When conditions change and those species become less accessible to fishermen, cooperatives may be more economically exposed and have fewer options to switch to than other types of fishing organizations.

This , a 91±ŹÁÏ alum and University of Rhode Island professor, makes a strong case that it’s not that one of these forms is better than the other, it’s that there are changes that people encounter in the business of fishing, whether it’s economic or environmental or political, where one or the other of these organizational forms tends to be advantageous.

What would you say is different about this collaborative group now compared to a few years ago?

We’ve been working for a long time to understand both the human and environmental dimensions of small-scale fisheries in northwest Mexico and to generate knowledge that can be used to support management and conservation in that region and in coastal places all around the world. I’m really proud of . It’s a great example of how we’ve been able to work together as a team, including people from lots of different disciplines. It also spans a really important time period, the global pandemic, and also a time of big political and economic change in Mexico.

What’s new is our ability to capture these big changes, socio-economically and politically, as well as environmentally, and to work together in a way that really reflects the richness and diversity of expertise that members of our team have.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu