Student Receives Highest Honor from NOAA

Physical and Life Sciences student Terrance Todd received the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Caribbean Fisheries Management Council’s highest student honor for the best oral or poster presentation.

Todd’s paper, “Use of Single-Stranded Conformational Polymorphisms to detect species relationship and population structure in the Atlantic sharpnose and Caribbean sharpnose” was presented at the 55th Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute Meeting held at Xel-Ha, Quintana Roo, Mexico. He described a technique designed to detect point mutations in small fragments of DNA that in turn was used to characterize the population structure of small coastal sharks common in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Todd’s research was performed under the supervision of Dr. Lillian S. Waldbeser (on the left) and under the guidance of Dr. Rocky Ward of Texas Parks and Wildlife (on the right). Support was also provided by Drs. John W. Tunnell, Jr. and David A. McKee.