Zofia Turek

I have graduated from the Department of Food Science and Fisheries at the Agricultural University of Szczecin, Poland in May, 2004 with the equivalent of an American MS degree and in the fall of the same year I joined the graduate program at the Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook University.

During the first three semesters of my studies here at Stony Brook I was trying to formulate the questions for my doctoral thesis research, which I have managed to do through the inspiration provided by the courses I have taken, literature I have read, and the MSRC faculty members, including my advisor Professor Nicholas Fisher.

I am interested in looking at the history of different species of chemical elements (e.g. As, Cr, Pb, and Cd), while passing through chemically different environments (pore water in the sediment, gut fluid, or cell matrix), beginning in the sediment and ending in the cell. In my research, which will be supported by the Center for Environmental Molecular Science at Stony Brook University (CEMS) and Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), I will mainly focus on the sediments as a source of the metals for deposit feeding invertebrates, including polychaetes and bivalves. I will examine the mechanisms that influence metal transformations and bioavailability, and will relate metal speciation in sediments with their bioaccumulation in benthic animals.