By Christian J. Falcon A SIMCoast Undergraduate Experience, Summer 2026 Christian Falcon presenting his summer research at the SURF 2026 Research Symposium My summer was spent researching plastic debris as part of Dr. Stephen O’Shea’s research group at Roger Williams University. Thousands of tons of plastic can be found on beaches and in the sediments of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, motivating us to better understand the relationships between plastic pollution and heavy m

By Kéa Anderson A SIMCoast Undergraduate Experience, Summer 2026 Kéa Anderson conducting an intercept survey at Beavertail State Park, RI with two coastal recreators. On the sea wall that surrounds Brenton Point State Park, on the southern coast of Aquidneck Island, a man fumes about the detriments of Rhode Island’s environmental organizations. He accuses non-profits of ruining commercial fisheries and destroying community wellbeing. Flourishing an oyster shucking knife in dr

By: MC Cicenia June 18, 2026 I attended the 2026 EPSCoR Annual Summit in New Orleans this past May with fellow SIMCoast team members Vinka Oyanedel-Craver (Co-PI at University of Rhode Island, Inter-Theme Co-lead) and Anabela Maia (Co-PI at Rhode Island College, Research Theme 3 Co-lead). At the time, I was wrapping up the first year of my PhD at the University of Rhode Island. My SIMCoast research project is focused on quantifying microplastics in water and sediment within t

March 17, 2026 The SIMCoast team recently participated in the 2026 Micro and Nanoscale Plastics (MNP) Workshop in Mobile, Alabama, hosted by the Gulf Coast Center for Addressing Microplastics Pollution (GC-CAMP) and sponsored by NSF ESPCoR. Dan Roxbury discussing NMP research with other workshop participants (Credit: Shenghua Wu) GC-CAMP highlighted its work on MNP sampling and characterization, along with complementary education and outreach efforts developed in partnership