“S” is for Science

“S” is for Science, School, Study... Meet the next generation of water scientists at Milwaukee’s flagship institution of higher learning—the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. What goes on inside this building? What are the stories of the students, scientists, and researchers who affectionately refer to their interdisciplinary institution as “SFS”?

They’re exploring the Great Lakes at our doorstep—like Jeff Houghton mapping the depths, Liz Ulrich surveying fish “habitat hotels,” and Graceanne Tarsa diving to collect invasive and sometimes elusive round gobies. They’re watchdogs for public and environmental health—like Katie Schulz researching the emerging contaminant PFAS, Jill McClary Gutierrez and Emily Koster studying patterns in sediment plumes, Kyle Poplar running trials on zebrafish to test toxicity, and Becky Curtis exploring nanomaterials in aquatic environments. And they’re at the forefront of new frontiers of research—like Dr. Dong-Fang Deng innovating new aquaculture feeds, Dr. James Price accounting for the unaccounted for to inform better water policy, and Dr. Ryan Newton discovering whole new communities of sewer microbes never before known to science. Not to mention always-explorer Dr. Val Klump on a mission to save the Great Lakes.

SFS is a dynamic center of research educating both graduate and undergraduate students. Other labs study chemicals in water, organisms from the Great Lakes, weather, climate science, and even DNA from sewer microbes.