Sam Vohsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biological Sciences at Lehigh University working with Dr. Santiago Herrera. He received a Ph.D. in Biology from the Pennsylvania State University in 2019, studying the impacts of hydrocarbon seeps on deep-sea coral communities and the microbial associates of deep-sea corals. The majority of his research has focused on the ecology, evolution, and physiology of the microbial associates of deep-sea corals using a variety of methods such as molecular and microscopy techniques. At Lehigh University, he studies how the microbial associates of mesophotic and deep-sea corals vary across the range of their host corals in an effort to determine which factors may drive that variation. On this cruise, he will be involved in efforts to understand how the microbial associates of corals may contribute to their production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). We hope to answer whether microbes in corals produce ROS directly and/or if corals use ROS to shape their microbial communities.
Cruises:
