Dr. Wade Jeffrey is Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation as well as director of the Reubin O’D. Askew Institute of Multidisciplinary Studies (AIMS). Jeffrey is an oceanographer focusing on bacterial function and diversity in the ocean. He studies the effects of ultraviolet radiation on marine microbes and has worked around the globe. He has also been involved with projects examining the effects of oil on microbial communities in the Gulf of Mexico, spawned by the 2010 BP oil spill.

A UWF faculty member since 1991, he has taught many courses, including Biological Oceanography, Climate Change Biology and Professional Development in Biology. Jeffrey has raised more than $6.5 million in outside funding for research projects that involved him, other faculty members and students.Jeffrey earned a Ph.D. and a M.S. in Marine Science from the University of South Florida and a B.S. in Biology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He also was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the EPA Research Laboratory on Pensacola Beach.

Numerous publications have carried his findings in leading journals including Nature, Nature Microbiology, Limnology and Oceanography, and Biogeosciences. He has represented UWF on the Florida Institute of Oceanography’s advisory committee for over 15 years. In addition he has been Associate Editor since 2004 of Limnology and Oceanography, which publishes original research articles, reviews, and comments about all aspects of limnology (the study of inland waters) and oceanography.

Dr. Rodney Guttmann has a PH.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Guttmann’s research includes biomarker assay development with a major focus on Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration. Other work in the lab involves the development of small bioactive peptides with potential clinical or research uses.

Dr. Guttmann research includes biomarker assay development with a major focus on Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration. Other work in the lab involves the development of small bioactive peptides with potential clinical or research uses.

Dr. Alexis Janosik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology; her research focuses on molecular ecology and evolution of invertebrates and fishes. Janosik’s research includes Environmental DNA, evolutionary history of invertebrates and fish, Antarctica and the Gulf of Mexico, and phylogeography, the study of population genetics and the historical processes that may be responsible for the contemporary geographic distributions of individuals. Some of her most recent research focuses on the phylogeography of invertebrates of the Gulf of Mexico and on Environmental DNA (eDNA) of Gulf and Alabama Sturgeon.

Janosik previously examined environmental DNA as a tool for detecting imperiled fishes and conducted research on the evolutionary history of Southern Ocean seastar species and unrecognized Antarctic biodiversity, among other topics. Janosik has made three research trips to the Antarctic and one to the Atlantic Continental Shelf. Janosik’s work has been published in Environmental Biology of Fishes, Marine Biology, Polar Biology and others.

Janosik has two degrees from Auburn University – a Ph.D. in Biology and a B.S. in Marine Biology. Her dissertation was titled “Seeing Stars: A Molecular and Morphological Investigation of Odontasteridae (Asteroidea).” Among the courses she teaches: Concepts of Oceanography & Marine Biology, Biology of Coral Reefs, Marine Mammalogy, and Tropical Marine Ecology in the Bahamas