MEES IN THE NEWS

october 2026

foundation spotlight: Environment, health & Society

NEWS ARCHIVE

MEES RESEARCH CENTER

harmful algal blooms in estuarine ecosystems

dr. judy o’neill (UMCES)

Dr. Judy O’Neil is a Research Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Horn Point Laboratory and a central faculty member in the Marine Estuarine Environmental Science (MEES) graduate program. An expert in cyanobacteria ecophysiology, plankton trophodynamics, and Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), Dr. O’Neil studies the complex aquatic systems at the nexus of nutrient pollution, water quality, and ecosystem health. Her research integrates biological oceanography with environmental monitoring to understand how changing climates and human-driven nutrient loading accelerate the proliferation of toxic algal blooms in estuarine and coastal zones.

Dr. O’Neil earned her undergraduate degree in Biology from Boston College, which included foundational sea-bound training with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She completed her master's studies in Marine Science at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook before earning her Ph.D. in Marine Estuarine Environmental Science (Biological Oceanography) right from the University of Maryland. Since joining the faculty, her base at the Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge, Maryland, has served as a critical hub for tracking water quality threats across the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Her extensive research has significantly advanced scientific knowledge surrounding toxic benthic cyanobacteria species like Lyngbya (Microseira) spp. and their cascading impacts on submerged aquatic vegetation. 

A hallmark of Dr. O’Neil's research is its deeply collaborative, cross-border, and interdisciplinary nature. By linking field-based oceanography with community-level environmental health outcomes, she has developed crucial insights into water safety, global sewage tracking, and food web disruptions. Her work extends internationally through initiatives like the U.S.–Australia Environmental Education Partnership funded by the U.S. Department of State, where she has served as Principal Investigator leading bi-national student research squads evaluating the sustainability of local water cycles. Her environmental findings provide baseline ecological data that help resource managers, public health officials, and coastal communities predict toxic bloom occurrences and protect public waterways. 

Throughout her distinguished career, Dr. O’Neil has driven impactful aquatic science publishing, culminating in prominent global research contributions. Most recently, she co-authored a notable paper in Nature Water detailing how universal microbial indicators can revolutionize the global surveillance of sewage contamination in urban harbors. She has also dedicated her expertise to broad community outreach, routinely delivering public seminars on coastal ecosystem linkages and spearheading local recycling campaigns with her laboratory group to create commemorative, eco-friendly infrastructure out of recycled plastics at the Horn Point campus. 

As a cornerstone faculty mentor in the MEES program, Dr. O’Neil has instructed many MEES courses—including MEES 621 (Biological Oceanography) and MEES 697 (Environmental Field Methods)—and leads immersive student research cruises aboard the UMCES fleet. Dr. O’Neil is also currently serving on the MEES Graduate Program Curriculum Committee (PCC).  Her legacy of mentorship spans decades of advising graduate scholars and Maryland Sea Grant Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) participants. Her hands-on training continues to empower the next generation of biological oceanographers to decipher complex plankton webs and defend coastal ecosystems against global ecological challenges. For more on Dr. O'Neil, please click here.

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emergine green nitrogen technology in the chesapeake bay:

an analysis of stakeholder perspectives

annika fife (M.S.,‘26)

Annika Fife (‘26, M.S.) is a recent MEES Master’s graduate at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), based at the Horn Point Laboratory and the Integration and Application Network (IAN). Annika is currently a Science Communication Scholar at IAN Advised by Dr. Matthew Houser,  Annika studied how grain farmers in the Chesapeake Bay region view "green nitrogen," a cleaner, low-carbon fertilizer made on the farm instead of using traditional, high-emission factory methods. She surveyed local farmers and held a workshop in March 2024 to see what worries them and what would make them use it. Her work was supported by the Global Nitrogen Innovation Center for Clean Energy and the Environment (NICCEE).

Before entering the MEES program in Fall 2024 under the Environment and Society foundation, Anikka earned dual B.A. degrees from Salisbury State University in 2023 in Communications Media Production and Environmental Studies, respectively, with a minor in Film, graduating cum laude with a 3.7 GPA. Annika was named to the Dean’s List and received the Transfer Merit Scholarship and the George E. Miles Scholarship. Her undergraduate coursework and projects emphasized the intersection of environmental science, policy, justice, and communication, including environmental photojournalism that produced The Bay in Words and Pictures, documentary filmmaking (such as a 30-minute film examining the social and environmental implications of large-scale poultry operations on Maryland’s Eastern Shore), field studies on agricultural tax ditches and organic gardening, and collaborative case studies on environmental injustice with students from Latin America.

These experiences sharpened her skills in stakeholder engagement, qualitative and mixed-methods research, science communication, media production (filmmaking, photography, digital editing), and community outreach. She completed internships as a Social Media Intern at Assateague Island National Seashore (creating content and collecting footage related to environmental issues and species such as piping plovers), an Intern with the Annapolis Film Festival, a Broadcaster for Salisbury University Sports Broadcasting, and a Social Media Intern with Green Heron Compost. She also contributed to policy-oriented group projects for the City of Salisbury focused on sustainable infrastructure and community engagement.

After graduation, Anikka joined UMCES as a Science Communication Scholar (and later Graduate Research Assistant/Environmental Communications Scholar) at IAN. There she produced educational outreach materials, contributed to major report cards (including the 2023/2024 Chesapeake Bay & Watershed Report Card), and strengthened partnerships linking research to management and public audiences. This role, combined with her Maryland roots (originally from Montgomery County and raised primarily on Kent Island), deepened her commitment to applied, place-based work on the Chesapeake Bay—addressing issues such as nutrient management, pollutants, restoration, and the social dimensions of environmental change.

Anikka entered the MEES M.S. program in Fall 2024 and completed a rigorous course load that included MEES 620 (Environment and Society), issue study groups, survey and data science methods, ecological anthropology, applied environmental science, skills for team science, science writing and communication, and statistics, while advancing her NICCEE-supported research. She successfully defended her thesis, Exploring On-Farm Green Nitrogen Production: Farmers’ Views on an Innovative Fertilizer Technology, on July 29, 2026. The study provides timely insights into how farmers may adopt (or resist) emerging green fertilizer technologies and how those decisions could affect nitrogen management, environmental outcomes, and policy in the watershed.

Her graduate work builds directly on her undergraduate strengths in bridging science, communication, and stakeholder perspectives. By centering farmers’ voices in the evaluation of a promising but understudied technology, Anikka’s research helps identify gaps between technological innovation, agricultural practice, and sustainable nutrient management—contributing both to regional decision-making and to broader conversations about the social and ecological dimensions of the green ammonia transition. Annika seeks to  ultimately obtain her Ph.D. and become a professor to help students pursue their interests and research. For more on Annika, please click here.

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MEES RESEARCH CENTER

reconciling satellite and inventory ammonia emmissions

for improved nitrogen management

garret wilcox (‘23, M.S.)

Chun Dai (‘24, Ph.D.) is a MEES doctoral student (Environment & Society Foundation) at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Appalachian Laboratory. She joined the program in Fall 2024 and is advised by Dr. Xin Zhang. Her dissertation research focuses on improving the understanding and management of anthropogenic nitrogen systems by reconciling satellite-derived (“top-down”) and inventory-reported (“bottom-up”) ammonia (NH₃) emissions. Her work examines why different approaches can produce substantially different estimates of ammonia emissions, identifies the environmental and technological factors driving those discrepancies, and explores how improved emissions information can support more effective nitrogen management.

Ammonia is a critical component of the global nitrogen cycle and is widely used in agricultural fertilizers, but emissions of NH₃ can contribute to air pollution, nitrogen deposition, and the formation of fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅). Understanding where ammonia emissions originate and how much is being released is therefore important for both agricultural sustainability and environmental protection. Chun’s dissertation approaches this challenge by comparing two different ways of estimating emissions: satellite observations that provide a “top-down” view of atmospheric emissions and conventional inventories that estimate emissions from reported or modeled activity data. Her research is organized into four components: evaluating discrepancies between satellite-derived and inventory-reported emissions at U.S. fertilizer production facilities; examining patterns and drivers of these discrepancies at the global scale; extending the analysis to non-point sources to investigate spatial and temporal differences in emissions and their effects on nitrogen deposition and PM₂.₅ formation; and evaluating potential emission-mitigation strategies, including pathways for the transition to green ammonia.

Before joining MEES, and originally from China, Chun earned a B.S. in Land Resource Management from Hohai University in 2019 and a Master of Agricultural Management from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2022. During her graduate studies, she worked on research examining agricultural land use, rural development, food security, and sustainable agricultural systems. One project evaluated rural development across China using multiple sources of spatial information, including nighttime-light imagery, vegetation indices, and points-of-interest data, and used spatial autocorrelation and geographic-detector methods to identify patterns and factors associated with underdeveloped rural areas. She also participated in the “Protecting the Black Soil Granary” project, where she took on leadership responsibilities in field research, coordinated work across multiple departments, and helped prepare research reports.

Her research included an investigation of the spatial-temporal patterns of non-grain production on cropland in China and its implications for food security, as well as research examining how changes in China’s grain-planting structure could reduce the consumption of cropland and water resources. She also contributed to research on global food-trade networks and their implications for food security and to a project examining nutrient flows associated with global food trade, including the sources of phosphorus underlying pork consumption in China. 

Before joining the MEES program, Chun also spent approximately one year working remotely as a Ph.D. student in Geography at McGill University under Dr. Graham MacDonald, developing research on large-scale agricultural land-use change and gaining experience working with complex global cropland datasets. Her transition to MEES allowed her to continue building on this interdisciplinary background while shifting her research toward nitrogen management and the environmental consequences of agricultural and industrial emissions.

At UMCES, Chun is part of Dr. Xin Zhang’s research group and the broader Global Nitrogen Innovation Center for Clean Energy and Environment (NICCEE), where she is a member of the Education and Information teams. NICCEE brings together researchers and students working on sustainable nitrogen management, technologies, and policy, providing a particularly strong interdisciplinary setting for Chun’s research. Chun’s long-term research interests center on sustainable agriculture, nitrogen management, agricultural and industrial emissions, land-use change, and the development of better information systems for understanding and reducing environmental impacts across food, energy, and agricultural systems. For more information on Chun, please click here.

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