MCR LTER Investigator, Dr Ruth Gates has been awarded the Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research by the University of Hawaii Board of Regents in recognition of scholarly contributions that expand the boundaries of knowledge and enrich the lives of students and the community.
Dr. Gates is a tenured researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. She capitalizes on the combination of close proximity to living coral reefs and world-class research infrastructure to address questions on how corals and reefs function. Her work crosses spatial scales from molecules to ecosystems; it employs tools from the fields of molecular, cell and computational biology, biochemistry, physiology and ecology. Her goal is to build human, biological and educational capacity to slow and stop declines in reef integrity, and to improve the prognosis for coral reefs in the face of intensifying impacts from climate change and human use. She mentors postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergraduates, and works with a diversity of national and international collaborators that encompass biologists, engineers, writers and artists