Qingzeng Zhu

Thanks to Glomar I was able to attend the 2018 Geobiology course. The training course, from June 12 to July 15, 2018, was directed by Prof. Dr. Alex Sessions, Prof. Dr. Woody Fischer, and Prof. Dr. Victoria Orphan from California Institute of technology. 16 Ph.D. students from all over the world participated in the course. Even though we come from very different backgrounds, we had very good interactions by introducing our own Ph.D. project and even tried to cooperate with each other. The course started with a field trip in Owens Valley (Mono lake,10 days) and then continued with lab work rotation in Caltech (14 days), and at last finished with data analysis and final presentation in Wrigley Marine Institute (Catalina Island, 11 days).

During the 10-day field trip, we studied the hot springs, ancient sedimentary rocks and fossils, and the modern biogeochemistry of Mono Lake in the Mammoth Springs area of the Eastern Sierra. On our way back to Caltech, we went to the coast near Ventura, CA to see sulfur springs and a world-famous exposure of the Monterey Formation. Evening lectures was a routine for each day. After the lectures, the students were required to upload all the sampling information from that day to the BOX on the Caltech website. All the students were divided into 4 project groups based on the samples collected during the field trip. The 4 projects are the Mono Lake water project, the Mono Lake sediment project, Naples Beach Monterey project, and Sulfur Mountain project.

The lab rotation in Caltech gave us laboratory instruction and hands-on experience with many of Caltech's cutting-edge facilities and instrumentation. The lab experiments included gene-related experiments (DNA extraction, RNA etc.), microscopy, FISH, biomarkers, isotopes, nanoSIMS etc.. We acquired a lot of skills and experiences on different fields especially the ones that we are not familiar with.

We finished the project with 11 days at the Wrigley Marine Center on beautiful Catalina Island, learning from a rotating cast of geobiology instructors and working on project data. There were dozens of scientists from all over the world to give us lectures, and we obtained both basic knowledge and scientific frontiers in different fields. Meanwhile, we interacted with the lecturers both in science and leisure time and established good contacts.

As introduced on Geobiology 2018 website, the goals of the Geobiology 2018 is to teach students about the ideas and questions that unite scientists from a variety of diverse backgrounds in this interdisciplinary field, to expose students to cutting-edge methodologies and analytical instrumentation and most importantly, to establish personal connections between established scientists in the field and course participants. After the course, the goals were surely achieved. The Geobiology Course provided me with a precious opportunity that broadened my knowledge and scientific skills and offered valuable networking opportunities for making connections to scientists in the field. All 16 of us are now connected with each other by this course and the friendship will last for life.

I would like to thank GLOMAR, Simons Foundation, and the Agouron Institute for financial support, also I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Alex Sessions, Prof. Dr. Woody Fischer, and Prof. Dr. Victoria Orphan for directing the course, Dr. Daan Speth, Dr. Danie Potocek, and Dr. Sarah Hurley for helping the students finish the project, all the scientists who visited and gave wonderful lectures, Julie Lee (Caltech) and Ann Close (Wrigley) for organizing accommodation.