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Protist Pro

WHOI microbiologist Virginia Edgcomb works on the Submersible Incubation Device (SID), a robotic instrument designed to collect, incubate, and preserve samples of microbes in the ocean. Scientist Craig Taylor and engineer Ken Doherty developed SID to study bacteria. Edgcomb worked with them and McLane Research Laboratories to expand its capabilities to include protists, single-celled organisms such as amoeba, ciliates, and foraminifera. Edgcomb has used this SID in the Mediterranean and other sites around the world. In 2012, she won the Seymour Hutner Award, a prize given annually by the International Society of Protistologists to an outstanding young scientist whose work on protists is internationally recognized. (Photo by Cherie Winner, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)