Tamara Frank, PhD

Dr. Tammy Frank is a professor at Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center. Her educational background includes a B.S. from California State University, Long Beach, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She came to Florida in 1992 as a post-doctoral fellow at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, after post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Connecticut Medical School and Hatfield Marine Science Center in Oregon. Discovering that Florida is the only state in the continental U.S. that met her temperature requirements, she has lived in Florida ever since. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the NOAA National Undersea Research Program, and the NOAA Ocean Exploration program. She has been chief scientist on 50 research cruises, and participated on 45 more as a lucky hitchhiker, conducting work off the coasts of the Bahamas, California, the Canary Islands, Cuba, Costa Rica, Florida, Iceland, Hawaii and Samoa. Her research focus for the DEEPEND project will be analyzing the distribution patterns of deep-sea shrimp, examining geographical differences that can be correlated to environmental conditions (currents, temperatures), day vs. night abundance differences as indicators of vertical migrations, and seasonal differences to determine if there is a seasonality to their reproductive behavior. In addition to conducting her research, she teaches Anatomy and Physiology to undergraduates, and marine physiology and deep-sea biology to graduate students. .