Tatiana Rynearson is an American oceanographer who is a professor at the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...

. Her research considers plankton diversity and abundance. Rynearson has been on several research cruises, including trips to the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

, the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

and the North Atlantic.

Early life and education

Rynearson grew up in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. She became interested in aquatic science as a junior at high school. She was an undergraduate student at Brown University, where she studied aquatic sciences. She was a graduate student at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

, where she studied the bloom dynamics in the centric diatom '' Ditylum brightwellii''. She remained at Washington as a postdoctoral researcher until she was appointed to the faculty at the

in 2005.

Research and career

Rynearson studies microbial ecology and evolutionary biology. She is particularly interested in diatoms - microscopically sized ocean plants, which help the ocean regulate global climate. She has studied the diversity of diatoms in the

Narragansett Bay Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering , of which is in Rhode Island. The bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. Sm ...

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

. ''The Plankton of Narragansett Bay'' is one of the world's longest plankton studies, and has been collecting data every week since the 1950s. In particular, she created genetic analysis methods that allow her to see the circuitry inside cells. In 2016, Rynearson was part of an expedition on the Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel. The mission departed from

Punta Arenas Punta Arenas (; historically Sandy Point in English) is the capital city of Chile's southernmost region, Magallanes and Antarctica Chilena. The city was officially renamed as Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to "Punta Are ...

with a specific focus on diatoms in the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...

. The information she collected as combined with genetic information provided insight in how polar diatoms were impacted by environmental change. Rynearson has been involved with the Metcalf Institute, which focuses on science communication. Rynearson was supported by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

ADVANCE program.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rynearson, Tatiana Living people Brown University alumni University of Washington alumni University of Rhode Island faculty American women geneticists Women climatologists American climatologists American geneticists Year of birth missing (living people)