Image above: (L to R: Thomas Wilson, Helene Laufer, R. P. Schmidt, Acting President, SUSB, and David Sarokin)

Helene R. Laufer, David J. Sarokin and Thomas C. Wilson, Jr. were selected as Jessie Smith Noyes Fellows for 1979-80. The Noyes Fellowship program was established in 1975 with a grant from the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation to MSRC and the Stony Brook Foundation to support outstanding graduate students working on significant environmental research in the coastal zone.

Helene R. Laufer graduated from SUNY Stony Brook in 1976 with a B.S. in Earth and Space Sciences. She won the Buttonwood Foundation Scholarship for the 1978-79 academic year and has done so again for 1979-80. Ms. Laufer is currently investigating the long-term transport and fate of dredged material at the New Haven dredged spoil disposal site in Long Island Sound, and is being directed in this research by Prof. Henry Bokuniewicz.

David J. Sarokin received a B.A. in environmental science from SUNY Purchase in 1976. He then studied air pollution modelling and sediment transport at the California Institute of Technology’s Environmental Quality Laboratory. Mr. Sarokin is presently working with Prof. E. J. Carpenter. His research involves the phytoplankton ecology of the Carmans River, and uses dialysis membrane bags to measure growth rates of natural populations.

Thomas C. Wilson, Jr. holds a B.S. in biology and chemistry, which he received from the College of William and Mary in 1978. He has been an educational volunteer aboard the Hudson River sloop Clearwater,
and has participated in biological studies of lower New York Harbor. Mr. Wilson is working with Prof. B. H. Brinkhuis to study anaerobic decomposition as it relates to the primary productivity of eelgrass
(Zostera marina) in Great South Bay.

The article was originally printed in the MSRC Newsletter, Volume 04 Number 03 from September 1979