Single-Use Plastic Crisis with Dr. Tracy Mincer
Plastic has become the most common form of marine debris in the 60 years or so since it entered the consumer arena and presents a major and growing pollution problem. A material of immense utility and durability, plastic has integrated seamlessly into our everyday lives. However, these favorable properties have also enabled plastic debris to fully integrate into the marine environment - from microscopic to macroscopic scales. Paradoxically, this persistent and abundant material presents a unique challenge to track once it escapes the waste stream. Work in our speaker's laboratory, together with collaborators, has focused on the first-order question, “What is the fate of plastic debris once it enters the marine environment?” Overall, this research has long-term aims to provide a perspective on tracking and understanding plastic debris export mechanisms that will enable an ocean-wide budget to aid scientists and policy makers and inform the general public.
This is a FREE program and will be held in the auditorium at the Mandel Public Library in West Palm Beach.
About the speaker:
Dr. Tracy John Mincer was born in Indiana and spent most of his childhood in Alaska. Mincer attended the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and transferred to the University of California, San Diego in 1991—graduating in 1995 with a B.S. in Chemistry/Biochemistry. Receiving his Ph.D. in Marine Chemistry in 2004 from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the field of marine microbial natural products and biotechnology, Mincer then became postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the field of marine microbial metagenomics from 2004-2008. A faculty member of the Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 2008- 2018, Mincer has been a Faculty member at Florida Atlantic University for over a year now. Research in the Mincer laboratory is focused on understanding the fate of plastic marine debris and its associations with microbes, and microbial chemical ecology and natural products discovery. Tracy is very excited to be part of the FAU team where he has a dual appointment between the Harriet Wilkes Honors College and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.
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