It’s a “three thesis submitted” kind of day!

That’s right, THREE Adrift Lab students submitted their thesis today – BIG CONGRATULATIONS to everyone involved. A special “woo hoo” to the students – Honours candidate Gabrielle Henderson and MSc candidates Meg Spiteri & Finn Otley – for pushing through to the very end. Their hard work and dedication to their projects over recent months has been inspiring. It’s been amazing to see the results and aspirations of these projects come to life, and to witness our brilliant team of supervisors come together at critical times to get drafts back in lightning speed (Jenn says as she whips off another draft from an airport boarding gate, perhaps one of the few times a flight delay has worked in a student’s favour!). The absolute flurry of emails over the past two weeks to ensure each person had time for feedback, and we weren’t overwhelming the students with too many versions, was a mammoth effort but worked very much to everyone’s benefit in the end. Super grateful to this long list of colleagues who created space and opportunity for Adrift Lab to collaborate on these projects:

– Dr Valeriya Komyakova, team leader of Anthrofish Lab who stepped in at a crucial time and pushed us all forward

– Drs Alex Bond, Joby Hollis, and Ed Rea who dialed in at all times of the day/night (from the UK) to ensure the student had high-level, technical advice

– Dr Mariela Soto-Berelov who did not hesitate to lend her support to a project identified as a priority by our ETNTAC Circle of Elders

– Drs Justine Barrett and Thomas Rodemann for being an invaluable sounding board when none of the methods seemed to be working (darn sediments!)

– Dr Prashant Bhaskar for his wealth of knowledge on ports/shipping (something we don’t know much about), site selection would have been infinitely more difficult without your intimate knowledge of place

Thesis topics: Gabbi – Rapid, repeatable recording of particle size and colour in plastics research Meg – Microplastic Contamination at Bell Bay Port, Tasmania Finn – 35-year history of bushfires on the Recherche Archipelago islands

#TeamWork #ThesisSubmitted #GoodScienceGoodPeople #PlasticPollution #PlasticIdentification #MethodDevelopment #FTIR #AdriftLab #ImageAnalysis #microplastics #ports #bushfire #EsperanceTjaltjraak