Anderson B. Mayfield

3rd person: Originally hailing from Nashville, Tennessee (USA; 800 km from the nearest ocean), Anderson began his coral reef research career in Bermuda twenty years ago as part of an exchange program with his alma mater Duke University (USA). This was followed briefly by study abroad and volunteer research stints on the Great Barrier Reef (Australia) and the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), respectively. In 2003, Anderson moved to Hawaii to work with the late Dr. Ruth Gates at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on 1) developing molecular tools for probing the physiology and health of coral-dinoflagellate endosymbioses and 2) characterizing the cellular mechanisms underlying the coral bleaching phenomenon. Upon obtaining his PhD in 2009, Anderson moved to Taiwan, where he spent 10-11 years working at their National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (NMMBA) as part of a series of publicly and privately funded post-doctoral research projects. One such stint involved a series of research cruises with the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (LOF) as part of their "Global Reef Expedition," which gave Anderson the opportunity to dive and sample corals from all over the Indo-Pacific (not limited to French Polynesia, Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, & elsewhere). Anderson continues to work closely with NMMBA and LOF to this day and is particularly interested in working with both institutes, as well as local collaborators, to profile the health and resilience of corals in the two most biodiverse reef systems on Earth: the Philippines and Indonesia (collectively constituting the "epicenter" of the Coral Triangle). In 2019 Anderson moved back to the United States to undertake a three-year contract research project at the University of Miami's Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies (funded by the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). This project began as a coral molecular eco-physiology project seeking to profile the protein profiles of thermally challenged Caribbean corals but grew into a much greater work on using machine-learning and other advanced predictive modeling and data analytical approaches to forecast the future of coral reefs. Although maintaining his long-standing interest in coral molecular eco-physiology, microscopy, molecular methods development, and coral and reef health assessments, Anderson's primary focus these days is on the use of these "big data" approaches to customize reef restoration and rescue initiatives in the "Anthropocene." 1st person I am a marine biologist from, oddly enough, Nashville, Tennessee. I have been in love with coral reefs since I first laid eyes on them as a 12-year old on my first trip to South Florida, where, serendipitously, I have worked as a scientist at the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies since 2019. In the intervening 25 years, I completed my undergraduate education at Duke University before moving to Hawaii for six years to earn my PhD under the world’s preeminent coral physiologist, the late Dr. Ruth Gates. After an 11-year post-doctoral research stint in the Coral Triangle, where I carried out coral reef research 1) at Taiwan’s National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium and, periodically, 2) aboard the Khaled bin Sultan Living Ocean Foundation’s research vessel, the Golden Shadow, I now strive to carry on Ruth’s legacy both scientifically and as the trustee for the International Coral Reef Society’s (ICRS) Ruth Gates Memorial Fund, which supports graduate student research in coral reef conservation. My over-arching research goal is to use molecular biotechnology and advanced data analytics to develop proactive tools for identifying resilient reef ecosystems that can withstand the onslaught of climate change.