NESM Spring Symposium
Friday, April 10 2026
Please join us on April 10 for our Virtual Spring Symposium.
We have an exciting lineup including keynote speakers, abstract submitted academic talks, core facilities and more from across the life and physical sciences. If you are interested in giving an oral presentation please submit an abstract by March 25.
Schedule at a Glance
9:05a - Opening Remarks - Jaqulin Wallace, President
9:15a - Zak Swartz - Marine Biological Laboratory
10:15a - Laura Smithson - Brown University
10:30a - Neeharika Verma - Marine Biological Laboratory
10:45a - Sylvia Baffour Awuah - University of New Hampshire
11:00a - Vendor Talks - 10 mins each
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Evident Scientific
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LifeCanvas Technologies
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Oxford Instruments
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Applied Scientific Instrumentation
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Tomocube
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Ensorcell
12:00p - Lunch
1:00p - Leonardo Villacis - University of Maine
1:15p - Tour of a Core
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UMass Chan - Christina Baer - Sanderson Center for Optical Experimentation
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UMass Lowell - Anna Marie Routsi - Microscopy Core Lab
1:45p - Noah Martin - MBL and Einstein
2:00p - Tirzah Abbott - Northwestern University
3:00p - Closing Remarks - Jaqulin Wallace, President
Keynote Speakers
We are pleased to announce our two keynote speakers for this year's symposium.
Marine Biological Laboratory
Northwestern University
Core Facility Virtual Tours
Learn more about core facilities in the New England Area
Speakers selected from Abstracts
TBD
Zak Swartz
Marine Biological Laboratory
Bio
I have spent my research career exploring animal development and reproduction from a biomedical, evolutionary, and most recently, environmental perspective. I trained as a Ph.D. student at Brown University, where I investigated primordial germ cells segregation in the sea urchin embryo. As a postdoc at the Whitehead Institute/MIT, I used sea star oocytes and human cell culture to ask how egg cells maintain themselves in an arrested state, age, and undergo meiosis. I am now a faculty member at the MBL, where we are exploring various aspects of oogenesis and the oocyte-to-embryo transition, using cell biological approaches in sea stars and other related animals.
Abstract
Title: Heads or tails? Mechanisms of developmental polarization in sea star oocytes
The fertilized egg is a complex cell with a big job: creating an entirely new body. Throughout animals, we find examples of positional information being maternally programmed into the egg, which will later define the body axes. How does this polarity arise in oocytes at the cellular level, and how is it read out by the embryo? To address this question, we are using live imaging and genetic approaches in the sea star Patiria miniata. In my talk, I will discuss our ongoing work defining how the Wnt pathway developmentally polarizes oocytes during meiosis.
Tirzah Abbott
Northwestern University
Bio
Tirzah Abbott is a Ph.D. student in Mineral Physics at Northwestern University working with Prof. Steve Jacobsen, and the manager of the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) facility at the NUANCE Center’s Electron Probe Instrumentation Center. She earned her B.S. in Geology from Beloit College and her M.S. in Geosciences from Northern Illinois University, with experience spanning paleontology, geochemistry, and mineralogy.
Since joining NUANCE in 2017, Tirzah has led SEM facility operations, overseeing a team that trains a large and diverse user base and collaborates with academic and industry partners on advanced materials characterization experiments. She is deeply involved in outreach and workforce development, co-founding the Women in Microscopy Conference in 2021 with Dr. Stephanie Ribet and leading the NSF REU program in nanotechnology for the past five years.
Her research focuses on characterizing geological and planetary materials formed in extreme environments using SEM-based diffraction techniques, including EBSD and TKD. She investigates high-pressure mineral transformations in shocked meteorites and studies laser 3D-printed lunar regolith for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and automated lunar construction in collaboration with ICON Technology Inc. and NASA.
Outside of research, Tirzah enjoys running, biking, sewing, birdwatching around Chicago (especially during spring migration), and spending time with her cats.
Abstract
Revealing multiple pathways of ringwoodite and wadsleyite formation in the Catherwood L6 shocked meteorite using transmission Kikuchi diffraction
Shock-melt veins in ordinary chondrites record extremely rapid, high-pressure mineral transformations. However, resolving the nano- to microscale mineral assemblages that form and are preserved during these events remains challenging. Here we show that near-axis transmission Kikuchi diffraction (NA-TKD), in the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), can reliably identify crystal structures and Fe–Mg variations in sub-micron, high-pressure olivine polymorphs across 10–15 µm fields of view, providing new insight into shock transformation processes.
We apply this approach to shock-melt veins in the Catherwood L6 chondrite, where host olivine along the vein margins transforms into dense, randomly oriented clusters of ringwoodite crystals. These textures indicate rapid solid-state transformation under extreme conditions. Olivine fragments entrained within the melt preserve similar ringwoodite-rich cores but develop Fe-rich reaction zones and Mg-rich wadsleyite rims at melt-contact boundaries, along with interstitial majoritic garnet. These features record brief melt interaction, partial dissolution, and recrystallization during shock events.
Together, the observed microstructures define a two-stage, but spatially variable transformation sequence: initial solid-state ringwoodite formation followed by localized melt-mediated overprinting and wadsleyite crystallization. This demonstrates that pressure–temperature conditions vary significantly across a single shock-melt vein, allowing multiple transformation pathways to operate at the same time or in sequence within the same region.
By enabling phase identification, crystallographic orientation mapping, and combined chemical–structural analysis at ~10–30 nm spatial resolution, NA-TKD with EDS provides nanoscale crystallographic mapping within the SEM. This approach makes it possible to reconstruct complex shock transformation histories across micrometer-scale regions, offering a powerful framework for understanding high-pressure processes in planetary materials.
Anna Maria Routsi
Microscopy Core Lab
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Bio
Dr. Anna Maria Routsi is Senior Laboratory Manager of the Microscopy Core Lab at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and serves as faculty in the Department of Chemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry and is a trained chemical engineer with over a decade of experience in materials science and engineering. Her expertise includes electron microscopy and spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and scattering, scanned probe techniques, and advanced light- and ion-based characterization methods, with applications in nanomaterials, energy, and functional materials.
Dr. Routsi also has training in Industrial Economics, which informs her approach to strategic laboratory management and sustainable research development. She collaborates with faculty, students, and external partners on interdisciplinary projects and she promotes microscopy education and the integration of analytical instrumentation into curricula.
Christina Baer
Sanderson Center for Optical Experimentation
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Bio
Christina Baer, PhD is an Associate Professor at UMass Chan Medical School and has served as Director of the Sanderson Center for Optical Experimentation (SCOPE) since 2018. SCOPE is a high‑impact light microscopy core supporting more than 200 users across 60+ laboratories. Trained as a biophysicist, her research integrates advanced microscopy, spatial multi‑omics, and microbiology to address questions in neuroinflammation and infectious disease. Dr. Baer has received multiple awards from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) to bring the latest in spatial ‘omics and imaging technologies to Worcester. She is a leader in bioimaging education and outreach, serving as co‑chair of the BioImaging North America Training and Education Working Group and as a co‑founder of ScienceLIVE, a UMass Chan educational outreach initiative expanding access to hands‑on science education.