May 13, 2008
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Alice Alldredge, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has received the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).
According to the citation, the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award is given to "a beacon of excellence, a researcher who, through innovative scientific activities that have deeply advanced our knowledge, serves as a model for the rest of us. Given her broad, significant, and ongoing impact on oceanography, there could be few people more deserving of this award than Dr. Alice Alldredge."
The G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award has been presented annually since 1982 to recognize excellence in any aspect of limnology or oceanography. In lending his name to the award, Hutchinson asked that recipients be scientists who had made considerable contributions to knowledge, and whose future work promised a continuing legacy of scientific excellence.
Investigations in the Alldredge lab at UCSB are focused on the role of "marine snow" in the ecology of the sea. Marine snow is a generic term for large, amorphous aggregates of detritus, algae, bacteria, fecal matter, and debris that form in the upper ocean and sediment to the seafloor. Marine snow provides the major source of food and carbon to ocean sediments.
For more than 50 years, ASLO has been a leading professional organization for researchers and educators in the field of aquatic science, working to provide for their needs at all phases of professional development. ASLO is best known for its highly rated research journals, its interdisciplinary meetings, and its special symposia. The society supports increasingly important programs in public education and outreach, and public policy.