UC Santa Barbara microbiologist Alyson Santoro received a pair of grants from the the 2016 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) conference  to pursue work inspired by the year’s theme, “Discovering the Deep Blue Sea.”

 

Designed to manifest concrete projects that produce educational, cultural, social or scientific impacts, NAKFI grants provide seed funding for important new research and activities that are sparked by the NAKFIannual conference and that bring people together in fresh ways. Santoro’s work certainly fits the bill. In two projects, she’ll meld science with art to explore microbes and the notion that they may serve as the ocean’s “memory.”