Inspired by the maneuverability of birds and insects, researchers are designing bird like robots that promise greater flexibility and control than current drones can achieve.

A bird banking in a crosswind doesn’t rely on spinning blades. Its wings flex, twist and respond instantly to its environment.

Engineers at Rutgers University have taken a major step toward building bird-like drones that move the same way, flapping their wings like real birds, using electricity-driven materials instead of conventional electromagnetic motors to power them.

Professor Onur Bilgen (at center) works with Rutgers engineering students on prototypes of a bird‑like robot powered by voltage‑driven smart materials. (From left) Graduate students Ayhan Ozel, Dario Gosevski, Bezawit Gebre and Batuhan Yildirim display models headed for wind‑tunnel tests.
Courtesy of the Bilgen Lab

In a study published in Aerospace Science and Technology, aerospace researchers Xin Shan and Onur Bilgen describe a “solid state” bird-like drone, typically referred to as an ornithopter, whose flexible wings flap and twist without motors, gears or mechanical linkages. Instead, the system relies on the piezoelectric effect, special materials that change shape when voltage is applied.

“We apply electricity to the piezoelectric materials, and they move the surface directly, without extra joints, extra linkages or motors,” said Bilgen, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the Rutgers School of Engineering. “The wing is a composite including a piezoelectric material layer and a carbon-fiber layer. Apply voltage to the piezoelectric layer, and the whole composite flexes.”

With their bird-like design, ornithopters offer a level of flexibility that makes such drones well suited for future tasks such as search and rescue, environmental monitoring, inspection of hard-to-reach places, and urban package delivery, where aircraft must navigate around buildings, wires, people, and so much more.

The research team also developed a powerful computer model that connects all the important physics involved in flight at once: wing and body motion, aerodynamics, electrical dynamics, and the control architecture. That allows engineers to test and optimize designs virtually before building physical prototypes, saving time and money while speeding development.

“We’ve scientifically demonstrated that this type of ornithopter can be possible when we make certain material assumptions,” he said. “We can show the feasibility of designs that are not yet physically possible.”

For now, the primary obstacle is the performance of the piezoelectric material.

In this computer-generated flight sequence, the ornithopter’s wings beat without any gears or motors—powered instead by thin piezoelectric actuators that flex the entire structure.
Courtesy of the Bilgen Lab

“Today’s piezoelectric materials are not capable enough,” Bilgen said. “However, our mathematical model allows us to look into the future with reasonable assumptions.”

Bilgen first encountered ornithopters in 2007 while he was a graduate student, but he said his interest deepened in 2013, when he began seriously exploring how flapping-wing flight might be reimagined using smart materials. Various companies have built experimental bird-like drones, but most existing designs rely on motors, gears and conventional actuators to drive wing motion.

Those systems, Bilgen said, struggle to match the performance of natural wings, which flex and respond continuously to changing air.

Bilgen says nature offers powerful lessons for engineers.

“Things that need to move fast must be lightweight,” he said. “That’s why bird wings are delicate structures, and aircraft wings mimic bird wings.”

While birds and insects provide inspiration for the work, Bilgen’s goal isn’t simple imitation.

“We don’t want to just mimic nature,” he said. “We want to exceed what nature does.” 

So far, most prototypes of robotic birds rely on mechanisms that imitate bones and muscles. Bilgen’s team is taking a simpler path.

“We want to achieve flapping flight without bone-like structures or muscle-like actuators, flapping in a much simpler way,” he said.

Advanced simulation tools developed at Rutgers help engineers optimize bird like drones in software first, accelerating innovation while reducing the need for repeated prototypes. Courtesy of the Bilgen Lab

Instead of motors acting as muscles, thin strips called Macro Fiber Composites (MFCs) are glued directly on their models onto flexible wings. When electricity flows through them, the wings flap, twist and morph.

“The carbon fiber acts like feathers and bone, and the surface-mounted MFCs act like muscles and nerves,” Bilgen explained.

Because the system has no gears or joints, the researchers call it a mechanism-free, or solid state, ornithopter.

Flapping wings offer advantages that spinning propellers found on conventional drones cannot, especially at small scales. “When flapping wings come in contact with the environment, they’re less destructive to themselves and to what they contact,” Bilgen said.

The use of piezoelectric materials or other smart materials could also improve renewable energy systems.

“A turbine blade is basically a rotating wing,” Bilgen said. “We’ve been looking at applying piezoelectric materials to turbine blades to see if there are aerodynamic benefits.”

By subtly changing blade shape in real time, engineers may be able to influence how air flows across the blade surface. That could lead to more efficient wind turbines, he said.

The article first appeared in Rutgers Today.

Researchers are examining the relationship between childhood obesity and future success. Sergio Arjona, Shutterstock

Childhood obesity may be quietly undermining one of the central promises of American life.

 A study by a Rutgers researcher has found that children who are obese are far less likely to climb the economic ladder as adults, raising concerns that a rising health problem also could deny many young Americans the chance to achieve the American dream.

“Childhood obesity isn’t just a health crisis,” said Yanhong Jin, a professor with the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a coauthor of the study. “It is an economic mobility crisis.”

The research, published in the Journal of Population Economics, examined how childhood obesity affects intergenerational mobility, which measures whether children grow up to earn more than their parents.

The study draws on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, often called Add Health, a nationwide project that has followed thousands of Americans from adolescence into adulthood for more than two decades. The study is composed of a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 adolescents who were in grades 7 through 12 during the 1994-1995 school year, and have been followed for six waves of data collection to date, with the  most recent wave from 2022 to 2025. The dataset includes information about participants’ health, education, income and genetic markers linked to body weight.

Professor Yanhong Jin, an agricultural and health economist, is exploring whether children today have the same opportunities their parents had at the same age.

Jin conducted the study with economists Maoyong Fan of Ball State University and Man Zhang of Renmin University in China.

Using the Add Health data allowed researchers to explore the question in a new way. The study includes genetic information that helped the team separate the effect of obesity itself from other factors such as family income or neighborhood conditions.

The results were striking. Adults who were obese as children ended up much lower on the national income ladder than those who had a normal weight as children. A child is considered obese if his or her Body Mass Index is at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex, based on standardized growth charts.

“If children are obese compared with normal weight children, assuming everything else is the same, their income ranking is about 20 percentile points lower relative to their parents,” Jin said.

The researchers then examined why that economic gap appears to emerge over time.

“The evidence points to lower educational attainment, persistent health problems and disadvantages within the labor market,” said Fan, a coauthor of the study. “These include higher reported job discrimination and adverse occupational sorting.”

For Jin, an agricultural and health economist, the topic carries personal meaning. As a first-generation immigrant from China, she said she has long been interested in the idea that each generation should have a chance to do better than the one before.

Her interest in intergenerational mobility deepened as she began thinking about the American dream and whether children today still have the same chances their parents had.

“We wanted to explore the link between childhood conditions and intergenerational mobility to see what we can do,” she said.

The researchers also found that people who were obese as children were less likely to live in neighborhoods with strong economic opportunities later in life. They were less likely to live in areas with higher average incomes and less likely to live in communities with low poverty rates.

Most previous research on economic mobility has focused on neighborhood conditions and family background. Jin said her team wanted to explore another factor that had received less attention.

Studies that focused on the long-term impacts of obesity were more likely to examine its relationship with social stigma and educational attainment.

“But few have considered its relationship to intergenerational mobility,” Jin said.

The effects weren’t the same for everyone. The study found that the economic penalty linked to childhood obesity was larger for girls than for boys. It also was stronger among children from low-income families and among those who grew up in the South and Midwest.

Jin said the findings highlight the importance of preventing obesity early in life. Many policies focus on treating obesity after it develops, but the research suggests that prevention in childhood before it develops could have long-term benefits for both health and economic opportunity.

“If you are obese in childhood, for whatever the reason, you have a penalty in your adult economic status,” Jin said.

For policymakers, the study offers a broader way to think about the issue, the researchers said. Childhood obesity has often been viewed mainly as a medical concern. The research suggests that, if left unaddressed, childhood obesity may also shape economic opportunity and social mobility for decades to come.

“Interventions that reduce childhood obesity can deliver benefits well beyond lowering medical spending,” said coauthor Zhang. “They can support higher educational attainment, improve job prospects and increase upward economic mobility for the next generation.”

This article first appeared in Rutgers Today.

L-R: Frances Wood (UKRI), and collaborators Bruce Greive (U Manchester), Siobain Duffy (Rutgers), Linda Hanley-Bowdoin (North Carolina State U), Hujun Yin (U Manchester), Jose Trino Ascencio-Ibáñez (NCSU), Vasthi Alonso-Chavez (Rothamsted Research) pictured at the Pioneering UK–US Breakthroughs (PUB) Award event on March 4, 2026. Photo credit: Thomas Pospiech – UKRI North America Thomas.Pospiech@ukri.org

At a reception hosted at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. on March 4, Professor Siobain Duffy and her international research team were recognized with the Pioneering UK–US Breakthroughs (PUB) Award, a distinction honoring seven collaborative teams whose work is addressing some of the world’s most urgent challenges.

Presented by His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States, Sir Christian Turner, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) International Director Frances Wood, the award highlights the global impact of cross-border scientific partnerships. Duffy, professor and chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, was part of one of the seven selected teams, recognized for pioneering a transformative technology to detect crop vi

Duffy serves as principal investigator on the NSF-BBSRC-funded project, “US-UK Collab: Resurrecting a role for roguing: Presymptomatic detection with multispectral imaging to quantify and control the transmission of cassava brown streak disease.” The research introduces a novel multispectral imaging device capable of detecting viral infections in crops earlier, faster, and more cost-effectively than traditional genetic testing.

Genetic analysis of cassava brown streak disease root necrosis using image analysis and genome-wide association studies. Copyright © 2024 Nandudu, Strock, Ogbonna, Kawuki and Jannink.

“This award reflects the strength of international collaboration in tackling complex global problems,” said Duffy. “By bringing together expertise across disciplines and continents, we are developing tools that can make a real difference for farmers and food systems worldwide.”

At the center of the team’s work is cassava brown streak disease, a devastating viral infection threatening cassava crops across sub-Saharan Africa. Cassava, a staple food for hundreds of millions of people, is also gaining traction globally as a climate-resilient alternative to wheat because it requires less water and can survive in harsher conditions.

The challenge, Duffy explains, is that the disease often goes undetected until it is too late. “The symptoms of the disease are often so subtle on the above-ground parts of the plant that farmers do not know their fields are infected,” she said. “The disease spreads throughout the growing season, and when the roots are harvested, they are full of necrotic lesions.”

To address this, the team has developed a cutting-edge multispectral imaging system that scans cassava leaves using wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum. Combined with machine learning models, the device can identify infected plants before visible symptoms appear—and even earlier than conventional molecular diagnostics.

“Our team has developed a multi-spectral imager that scans cassava leaves with many wavelengths of light,” Duffy explained. “Extensive training has yielded machine learning models that can detect diseased plants earlier than molecular tests, and much earlier than slight symptoms develop.” Early detection enables farmers to remove infected plants before the disease spreads. “If we had a better way to detect which plants were infected earlier in the season, then farmers could ‘rogue’ the diseased plants and prevent further spread of the disease,” she added.

A new device for field-testing crops for Cassava Mosaic and Brown Streak disease. Photo courtesy of UKRI.

The project brings together a highly interdisciplinary team spanning institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and East Africa, including molecular virologists, evolutionary biologists, engineers and AI specialists, mathematical modelers, and field-based researchers working directly with farming communities. Field testing of the imaging device is currently underway in Tanzania, where the team is evaluating its effectiveness in real-world conditions.

Looking ahead, Duffy notes that if the technology proves successful, the team plans to partner with Tanzania’s clean seed system to ensure that certified cassava planting material is free of the disease.

The broader implications of the research are significant. By enabling earlier detection and containment of plant viruses, the technology has the potential to reduce crop loss, boost yields, and decrease reliance on expensive laboratory diagnostics. In doing so, it supports local livelihoods, strengthens rural economies, and contributes to more resilient global food systems.

“This technology can help safeguard food security,” said Duffy, underscoring its importance for regions where cassava is a dietary and economic cornerstone.

Funded jointly by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council through the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease Program, the project exemplifies how international collaboration can drive innovation with meaningful, far-reaching impact.

Image by Dragon Claws, licensed via Adobe Stock (Education License)

Ask a New Jersey middle schooler what they think about when choosing what to eat, and you’ll probably hear: taste, texture, and whether it’ll upset their stomach. Ask them what they do to help the planet, and they’ll mention picking up litter or recycling. What most won’t mention? The connection between the two. A new study out of Rutgers University set out to understand what drives food choices among New Jersey fifth graders — and why so few of them link their diet to climate change — with the goal of building better classroom curricula to bridge that gap.

The study was led by Rutgers researchers, including affiliates of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Sara Elnakib, lead author and associate professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Health Sciences at Rutgers Cooperative Extension; and co-authors Shauna Downs, associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy at Rutgers School of Public Health; Peggy Policastro, director of Behavioral Nutrition-Rutgers Dining Services; and Ethan Schoolman, associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University; and— all co-authors on the study.

The authors interviewed 41 fifth graders from three different New Jersey schools — an urban school serving low-income students, an urban school serving middle-income students, and a rural school serving middle-income students. The schools were chosen to reflect the diversity of communities across the state. The students were asked about what factors matter to them when choosing food, and separately, what they do to take care of the planet.

The findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, showed that taste topped the list when it came to food choices, followed by health, hunger, and how food affects the body — including digestion. Family influence also played a big role, as did friends, who often nudged kids toward less healthy options. Notably, most students didn’t think much about food price or convenience unless their parents brought it up.

When asked about helping the planet, students were engaged and thoughtful — but their ideas centered on littering, recycling, and protecting forests and oceans. Almost none of them connected food choices to climate change. Only one student mentioned avoiding meat for environmental reasons. This gap is significant: food production — especially beef and other red meat — is a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions. Shifting toward more plant-based diets is one of the most impactful ways individuals can reduce their carbon footprint.

“These kids genuinely care about the environment; they just haven’t been shown how their everyday food choices are part of the picture. If we can connect what they eat to the things they already care about, like reducing waste, we have a real opportunity to shape healthier habits and a more sustainable food system at the same time,” stated Downs.

The study’s findings carry direct implications for education policy. In 2020, New Jersey became the first U.S. state to require climate change education in schools — and this research was designed to help shape how that curriculum addresses food and diet. The authors suggest that effective messaging should focus on taste and texture of plant-based foods, connect environmental impact to tangible behaviors students already understand (like “this meal uses as much water as leaving your tap on for X minutes”), and tie food choices to protecting animal habitats — something the students cared deeply about. Involving families alongside students could also amplify impact, particularly in communities where parents have strong influence over what kids eat.

As states across the U.S. begin integrating climate education into their schools, this kind of research offers a roadmap for making those lessons stick — by meeting students where they are and connecting big global issues to the everyday choices they already care about. Read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed by Shauna Downs and Sara Elnakib, co-authors on the study.

Images of healthy (left) and SCTLD-diseased (right) Montastrea cavernosa corals in waters near the Dominican Republic. Images by divers at the Marine Innovation Center, Punta Cana. Photo credit: Debashish Bhattacharya

A mysterious disease has been quietly destroying coral reefs across the Caribbean for over a decade. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, causes coral tissue to simply fall away, killing entire colonies — and no one has been able to pinpoint exactly what causes it. Now, new research is offering some of the clearest clues yet.

Debashish Bhattacharya, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology and affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, supervised the work that was led by graduate student Shrinivas Nandi in his lab and published in ISME Communications. The research examined the microscopic communities — bacteria, viruses, and other microbes — living inside diseased and healthy corals collected from reefs in the Dominican Republic.

The authors found that when corals get SCTLD, the rich and diverse community of microbes that normally lives inside a healthy coral essentially collapses. In its place, harmful bacteria move in and take over. The study also found strong evidence that viruses may be setting this collapse in motion — disrupting the healthy microbiome and opening the door for dangerous bacteria to thrive. This phenomenon is referred to as dysbiosis.

Five specific viruses were found in significantly higher amounts in diseased corals. Strikingly, the same viruses turned up in SCTLD-affected corals from Florida — over 1,000 miles away — suggesting these viruses are consistently linked to the disease across the Caribbean.

Perhaps the most surprising finding was the discovery of two coral colonies that appeared healthy for at least nine months after sampling, yet contained the same viruses found in sick corals. These “asymptomatic” corals had a different bacterial community than diseased ones, hinting that the right mix of microbes or a resistant coral genotype might protect some colonies from getting sick — even when the virus is present.

“Finding corals that appear resistant to this disease is genuinely exciting. It opens the door to the possibility of identifying beneficial microbial communities (natural probiotics) or resistant genotypes that could be used for coral conservation. Given how rapidly SCTLD is spreading across the Caribbean, there is also a need for SCTLD diagnostic tools to screen wild and nursery populations for signs of the disease (virus DNA), an area we are actively working on with our partners in the region,” said Bhattacharya.

As climate change warms and stresses the ocean, coral diseases like SCTLD are expected to become more severe and widespread. These findings offer a potential path forward: by identifying the molecular “fingerprints” of disease — and resistance — scientists may be able to develop early warning tools to flag at-risk reefs and guide targeted conservation efforts before it’s too late.

You can read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed and editted by Debashish Bhattacharya, senior author of the study.

New research has shown a way to easily differentiate healthy guts from unhealthy guts headed toward disease.

Scientists have identified a new way to distinguish healthy guts from diseased ones and track how some illnesses progress by measuring how gut bacteria interact with one another.

According to a study published in Science, a Rutgers-led team of scientists found that healthy and diseased digestive systems behave like two distinct ecological states, driven not by individual microbes but by how entire bacterial communities compete and cooperate.

“Instead of asking which bacteria are there, we started asking how they are related to other bacteria,” said Juan Bonachela, an assistant professor with the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a senior author of the study. “That change in perspective allowed us to see health and disease as two fundamentally different states of the gut microbiome.”

To measure how bacterial communities shift between health and disease, the team developed a new metric called the Ecological Network Balance Index, or ENBI, which captures whether microbial communities are dominated by competitive or cooperative interactions.

Applied to stool samples, ENBI consistently separated healthy individuals from patients across multiple diseases. In colorectal cancer, the index rose as the disease progressed.

“This new measure captures this shift using stool samples and can distinguish healthy people from diseased people,” said Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and an author of the study. 

Rod-shaped bacteria and spherical cocci, shown here in contrasting colors, represent different microbes that share the gut’s complex ecosystem. Scientists have found that shifts in how these microbes compete and cooperate can signal the difference between health and disease. Graphic: Xuesong Zhang/Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine

Dominguez-Bello said the findings show how disease emerges when microbial communities reorganize themselves.

“This work shows that gut health is not just about which bacteria are present, but how they interact with one another,” she said. “In diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, C. difficile infection, irritable bowel syndrome and colorectal cancer, bacteria form more cooperative, tightly connected groups that can dominate and disrupt normal function.”

Martin Blaser, an author of the study and director of Rutgers Health’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, said the findings help explain why so many gut-related diseases have been difficult to predict and treat.

“This gives us a new way to think about what goes wrong in the microbiome,” Blaser said. “Instead of focusing on individual microbes, it shows that disease emerges when the entire system shifts. That opens the door to earlier detection and more targeted interventions.”

The team started their research by building computer models that simulate how gut bacteria compete for nutrients and exchange metabolic byproducts.

“At first we were just testing whether the model could reproduce basic features of real microbiomes,” said Roberto Corral Lopez, the study’s lead author, who conducted the research as a Fulbright doctoral scholar at Rutgers and now is a postdoctoral associate at the Universidad de Granada and the Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional in Spain. “But very early on, we saw that it naturally produced two distinct patterns, one that looked like health and one that looked like disease.”

That prompted the researchers to compare their simulations with stool DNA data from patients.

“When we checked the data, we saw the same pattern,” Corral Lopez said. “That’s when we realized we were capturing something fundamental about how these communities reorganize in disease.”

The gut microbiome consistently settled into one of two configurations: a diverse, competitive state associated with health, and a second state dominated by small, tightly connected groups of cooperating bacteria linked to disease.

Bonachela said the insights and the tool could eventually help doctors identify problems earlier.

“In theory, it should be possible to measure it from just stool samples, which is a very non-invasive way to monitor gut health,” he said.

The findings also may help explain why gut therapies such as probiotics and fecal microbiota transplants sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.

“Treatments are typically based on the idea that you need particular bacteria to be there,” Bonachela said. “But if that is not the issue, if the issue is the relationships, then it does not matter that you give the bacteria.”

With fecal transplants, he said, the benefit may come not from introducing individual species, but from restoring entire microbial communities.

“The interesting aspect is not that you introduce the species,” Bonachela said. “It is that you introduce a whole community, and therefore you are keeping the interactions that allow that community to be healthy. It is not that bacteria need to be there. They need to be there with the right partners.”

Corral Lopez said the work eventually could make microbiome-based therapies more predictable.

“Right now, donor selection is largely based on availability and basic health screening,” said Corral Lopez, referring to the process preceding fecal transplants. “What this opens up is the possibility of matching microbial communities based on how their interaction networks fit together, rather than just which species are present. That could help us design treatments that are tailored to each patient’s microbiome instead of relying on trial and error.”

Bonachela said the team hopes their work will eventually lead to earlier detection and more personalized care.

“We are trying to understand how these systems work so we can make a real difference in people’s lives,” he said.

Michael Manhart of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School contributed to the study. Other contributors include Simon Levin of Princeton University and Miguel Munoz of the Universidad de Granada.

This article originally appeared in Rutgers Today.

Sampling rosette with gray sampling bottles at left, the ship’s rail at lower right, and the face of the ice shelf in the background. Photo: Rob Sherrell

For scientists who study the Southern Ocean, a long-standing silver lining in the gloomy forecast of climate change has been the theory of iron fertilization. As temperatures rise and glaciers in Antarctica melt, ice-trapped iron would feed blooms of microscopic algae, pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.

There’s just one problem: The theory doesn’t hold water.

In what researchers describe as the most accurate measurement of iron inputs from a glacier in Antarctica, marine scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick have discovered that meltwater from an Antarctic ice shelf supplies far less iron to surrounding waters than once thought.

The findings, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, raise questions about the sources of iron in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, and could significantly alter how climate change predictions are forecasted and modeled, the researchers said.

“It has been widely assumed that glacial melting underneath ice shelves contributes considerable bioavailable iron to these shelf waters, in a process of natural glacier-driven iron fertilization,” said Rob Sherrell, a professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the study’s principal investigator. 

Sherrell said the study modifies those assumptions by determining that the amount of iron in meltwater is several times lower than previously thought and that most of that iron comes from a different type of meltwater than is produced by ice shelves melting.

Despite being shrouded in darkness for several months a year, the Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean are a highly productive region for growth of phytoplankton – the vital food source for krill, which feeds penguins, seals and whales. As phytoplankton grow, they absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, making the region the world’s largest oceanic sink for the climate-warming gas. 

Previous research into iron sources in the Southern Ocean has primarily been through simulations and computer modeling. Together with researchers from Rutgers and several universities in the United States and the United Kingdom, Sherrell, who also is a professor at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, took a different approach. In 2022, they traveled aboard a now-decommissioned U.S. icebreaker, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, to the Dotson Ice Shelf, located in the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, to collect melting glacial water at the source.  The Amundsen Sea accounts for most of the sea level rise driven by Antarctic melting. 

In the Amundsen Sea, glacial meltwater comes from beneath floating ice shelves – the seaward extensions of glaciers from the continent – and the melting is caused primarily by warm water that flows from the deep ocean into the cavities under the ice.

At the Dotson Ice Shelf, Sherrell and his team identified where seawater enters one such cavity and where it exits after meltwater is added. They collected water samples from entry and exit points.

Back in New Jersey, Sherrell’s colleague Venkatesh Chinni, a postdoctoral scholar and lead author of the study, analyzed the samples for iron content in both its dissolved state and in suspended particles.  Collaborators Jessica Fitzsimmons, a professor and chemical oceanographer, and Janelle Steffen, an assistant research scientist, both at Texas A&M University, measured the isotopic ratios to “fingerprint” and distinguish the sources. Steffen carried out initial isotopic measurements in the laboratory of Tim Conway, an associate professor at the University of South Florida.

Chinni and the team then calculated how much more iron was coming out of the cavity than went in and deduced from the isotopic data the type of melting that was responsible.

The results were surprising, Sherrell said. Total meltwater contributed about 10% of the outflowing dissolved iron, with the majority contributed by inflowing deep water (62%) and another 28% as inputs from shelf sediments.

“Roughly 90% of the dissolved iron coming out of the ice shelf cavity comes from deep waters and sediments outside the cavity, not from meltwater,” Chinni said.

Additionally, iron isotope ratios from the samples suggest that somewhere beneath the glacier is a liquid meltwater layer that lacks dissolved oxygen, a condition that promotes the dissolution of solid iron oxides in the bedrock, seemingly a larger source of iron than ice shelf melting, Chinni said.

Taken together, the findings challenge prevailing assumptions about iron sources in the Southern Ocean in a warming world, though additional research is needed to better understand how the subglacial processes are involved, the team said.

“Our claim in this paper is that the meltwater itself carries very little iron, and that most of the iron that it does carry comes from the grinding up and dissolving of bedrock into the liquid layer between the bedrock and the ice sheet, not from the ice that is driving sea level rise,” Sherrell said. 

For some colleagues, this will be a very surprising realization, he added.

This article first appeared in Rutgers Today.

Haskin Lab scientists performing oyster stock assessment on an industry vessel. Photo credit: Jenn Gius

The Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory has played a central role in supporting New Jersey’s oyster industry through decades of research, collaboration, and science-based management. Since 1953, the lab has worked closely with the Delaware Bay oyster industry and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish and Wildlife to address challenges affecting oyster populations and to help sustain this vital natural resource.

The partnership began when the industry sought assistance in identifying the causes of declining oyster stocks in 1953. In response, the Haskin Lab established annual population surveys of oysters in Delaware Bay. These surveys continue today and provide the scientific foundation for managing the fishery and supporting a sustainable harvest. Over time, and with external expert review that includes NJDEP scientists and active oyster harvesters, the lab has helped guide the development of a sustainable oyster fishery recognized as a leading model both regionally and nationally.

A key component of this success is the use of a “total allowable catch” approach, which differs from many shellfisheries that rely on license limits or shortened harvest seasons. This method allows for more precise, science-based management of the resource while balancing ecological sustainability and industry needs.

An industry vessel moving oysters to enhance the oyster population. Image courtesy of Haskin Lab.

The Haskin Lab continues to convene and contribute to important statewide discussions and decision-making processes. On February 4–5, 2026, the lab hosted the Annual Delaware Bay Stock Assessment Workshop, bringing together scientists, industry representatives, and resource managers to develop harvest recommendations based on the status of the stock.  Results were presented to the Shellfisheries Council on March 3, helping inform policy decisions grounded in current data and research.

Following these recommendations, the council approved a potential harvest of 79,866 bushels, which is about 2% of the stock. The fishery works hard with the NJDEP and the Lab to complete enhancement activities designed to support long-term population recovery.

The Delaware Bay oyster fishery has a meaningful economic impact, particularly in rural areas of southern New Jersey. The industry supports a network of related businesses, including marinas, shipyards, and local suppliers, in addition to the oystermen themselves. By the time oysters reach consumers, the total economic impact of the fishery is estimated to exceed $26 million.

Through its ongoing research, statewide collaboration, and leadership in hosting and presenting at key events, the Haskin Lab continues to play a critical role in sustaining both New Jersey’s oyster resources and the communities that depend on them.

Image by Mumemories, licensed via Adobe Stock (Education License)

Droughts are the world’s most widespread natural disaster, and climate change is making them longer, more intense, and possibly more frequent. But how much do droughts actually hurt local economies and can water storage help cushion that blow? A new study tackles these questions on a global scale.

Hilary Sigman, affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute and professor of Economics at Rutgers, is a co-author of the study along with Sheila Olmstead, Professor at Cornell University. The study is published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. The research looked at whether having access to dams or underground water — called groundwater — helps communities stay economically stable during droughts.

The authors measured economic activity using satellite images of nighttime lights. Brighter lights generally mean more economic activity. They found that moderate or worse droughts dim those lights by about 2%, which works out to roughly a 0.6% drop in GDP. Even mild droughts showed measurable negative effects.

But here’s where it gets hopeful: the presence of dams and accessible groundwater significantly reduced drought’s economic damage. Areas with a local dam — as long as it wasn’t a hydroelectric dam — nearly cancelled out the economic harm from moderate droughts. Groundwater also helped, especially in areas sitting above the most accessible types of underground water reserves.

Hydroelectric dams, which rely on water flow to generate electricity, were a notable exception. Nighttime lights fell more in areas with these dams than with other types of dams perhaps because droughts reduced hydroelectric power output.

Importantly, the study found that upstream dams did not hurt the drought resilience of downstream communities, even though previous research has raised concerns about downstream harms from dams.

“We found that dams and groundwater help insure communities against economic losses from all but the most extreme drought. Thus, communities may want to invest in dams and improve groundwater management to help them withstand climate change,” said Sigman.

As climate change pushes more regions toward water stress, these findings highlight that policymakers may use water storage infrastructure as a tool for climate change adaptation. Protecting and improving access to groundwater, and building or maintaining non-hydroelectric dams, could help shield local economies from the growing threat of drought.

You can read the full study here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence, was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham, and was reviewed and edited by Hilary Sigman, a co-author on the study.

Image by Kruwt, licensed via Adobe Stock (Education License)

Miles off the coast of New Jersey and New England, two major forces are converging: the rapid expansion of offshore wind energy and some of the most valuable fisheries in the United States. A new editorial published in Fisheries Oceanography takes stock of what we know — and what we urgently need to find out — about how these two uses of the ocean can coexist as climate change reshapes the sea.

Daphne Munroe, associate professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences and the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory at Rutgers University, and affiliate of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, is the lead author. She and co-author Eileen Hofmann of Old Dominion University introduce a special issue of the journal dedicated entirely to this challenge.

The stakes are significant. East Coast fisheries generate $2 billion per year in revenue — about 40% of the national total — and many of the most productive fishing grounds sit squarely within zones already leased for wind farm construction. The Atlantic sea scallop fishery alone averages roughly $465 million in annual landings, and scallop habitat overlaps heavily with planned wind energy sites.

At the same time, warming ocean temperatures are pushing fish and shellfish to new areas, meaning the ocean these wind farms are being built in today will look different in 30 years — the typical lifespan of a wind installation. Research featured in the special issue projects, for example, that Atlantic surfclam populations will likely shift northward over time, potentially opening new fishing grounds in areas currently outside wind lease zones.

The collection of studies also highlights an opportunity. With several U.S. offshore wind projects currently delayed or stalled due to economic and political headwinds, there may be a window to conduct critical baseline studies before construction begins — research that would make it far easier to measure and manage the impact of these projects down the road.

“The offshore ocean is a shared resource, and decisions made today about wind energy development will shape the future of our fisheries for decades. Getting the science right — understanding how fish habitats, fishing communities, and renewable energy development interact — is essential for making sure we can have both a clean energy future and healthy, productive fisheries,” said Munroe.

You can read the full editorial here.

This article was written with assistance from Artificial Intelligence and was reviewed and edited by Oliver Stringham and Daphne Munroe, a co-author on the study.