News
Dr. Yonathan Zohar to partner with aquaculture giant AquaCon in Maryland

A new MOU between UMBC, IMET, and AquaCon establishes a collaboration on developing land-based aquaculture in Maryland. AquaCon made this decision after meeting with Dr. Yonathan Zohar and touring the Aquaculture Research Center, seeing all the innovation that will help them as they build up a new aquaculture facility. An article on UMBC News explains this collaboration, as well as the importance of Silfra BioSystems, a company started by Dr. Zohar and Dr. Kevin Sowers, to manage fish waste in aquaculture, and an NSF grant to Dr. Zohar for research on fish reproduction.
“It’s a perfect storm in a good sense, because everything is falling in place now,” says Zohar. “I’ve been working in Maryland for almost 30 years, and we’ve been developing a lot of these technologies. Our mission is research, education, and economic development, and we have been working to create connections between academia and industry to fulfill that mission.”
Read the full story on UMBC News
Read coverage in the Baltimore Sun
Ryan McDonald, Ph.D.

The Department of Marine Biotechnology would like to congratulate Ryan McDonald for being recognized by his mentor Dr. Hal Schreier with the Outstanding Graduating PhD Student Award.
Dr. McDonald graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) on May 21 with a degree in Biological Sciences. He is currently working at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) as an Assistant Scientist in Dr. J. Sook Chung’s lab.
Salmon Aquaculture Network Project Underway
IMET-UMBC Faculty and Director of ARC Dr. Yonathan Zohar is the lead P.I. on the Recirculating Aquaculture Salmon Network (RAS-N). RAS-N, which was awarded a $1.2 million grant, is a national public-private partnership that brings together many partners to build capacity for land-based Atlantic salmon aquaculture in the US. At the end of 2019, the group convened in Wisconsin for their first annual meeting. In February of this year, RAS-N organized a dedicated Salmon RAS session at the Aquaculture America 2020 conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, where several partners and others presented their progress. You can read more about the project and these meetings on the Maryland SeaGrant Blog.
Dr. Colleen Burge invited to speak at UTA
Arlington, TX (October 22, 2015)Dr. Colleen Burge, an Assistant Professor at IMET, was invited to give a lecture at the University of Texas at Arlington as part of their colloquium lecture series. Dr. Burge’s lecture, titled “Host-Pathogen Interactions in a Changing Ocean”, discussed her research on diseases in sea stars and oysters, and the effects they have on the marine environment. Please watch the video above for more coverage on Dr. Burge’s lecture.
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Chesapeake Bay Aquaculture Presents
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UMBC Researchers Raise Atlantic Bluefin Tuna
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