This year the National Geographic Society funded four students in the nation to conduct field research during the summer. A Fisher Biology (rising) sophomore, Cody Sirikhamphoune, joined our group to help advance our "space bacteria" project. The project started in 2013 in collaboration with our Imaging Science and Remote Sensing colleagues at nearby RIT. The goal is to construct a database of microbial flora in bodies of water in the Rochester-Lake Ontario Embayment area and use that information to eventually predict the presence of certain bacteria using satellite imagery. Cody collected water samples on the specific dates in which Landsat 8 images the area and processed them in the lab in order to identify and store individual bacterial isolates.
