Sometimes all signs point in a certain direction. So it was last winter when I met with folks from the Alumni Association to begin planning our spring semester “Research On The Road” events. They mentioned that the alumni chapter in Puerto Rico is rapidly growing, with hundreds of Penn State grads on the island, and increasingly active membership programming. I left that meeting (bundled up against the cold and snow) pondering their enthusiastic suggestion to bring ROTR to Penn State’s hopping Caribbean alumni group.
Just hours later, I happened upon a Penn State video about the work of Iliana Baums, associate professor of molecular ecology in Penn State’s biology department. Trained at the University of Miami and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Baums focuses her work on the coral reefs of the Caribbean and, in particular, has ongoing research projects on Elkhorn corals in Puerto Rico.
