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Meet Shayna Sura: A data synthesis postdoctoral scholar

Dr. Shayna Sura

With just a brief glance at Dr. Shayna Sura’s website, you get the sense that she is a high achieving researcher who is always ready for a new challenge. Since college, she has lived all across the country and held a variety of research positions looking at everything from grasshoppers and brine shrimp to seagrass and coral reef ecosystems. She is a resilient researcher who expertly handles any obstacles that come her way. She is eager and excited to move to new places to explore human impacts in different ecosystems. I sat down with Dr. Sura to discuss how she ultimately arrived at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis’s (NCEAS) Gulf Ecosystem Initiative (GEI) and her work as a postdoctoral researcher.

The path to marine science

“So I actually kind of have the stereotypical story,” Sura said, which starts when her family traveled from Wisconsin to Hawaii for a vacation. She snorkeled through coral reefs and large schools of fish and decided then that she wanted to be a marine biologist. However, she returned to the Midwest, and let her childhood dream lay dormant. 

In high school, she thrived in her math and science classes, so she focused on that when applying to colleges. She studied Environmental Sciences at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “So still in the Midwest,” she joked. 

It all clicked for Sura during the ecology section of the Biology II course she took her freshman year. She learned that researchers get to travel around the world to study different organisms and ecosystems. One day after class, she asked her professor how she could get involved and conduct research outside of the classroom. This led to her first research experience where she spent the summer after her freshman year studying grasshoppers in Montana. “We’re still a long way away from getting to anything marine science,” she laughed. 

This research experience got Sura hooked on ecological research, and she embarked on a series of research experiences throughout the rest of her undergraduate career. She traveled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a summer to study freshwater snails, from which she published her first manuscript – an uncommon feat for an undergraduate. By her junior year, she was ready to dip her toes into saltier waters and studied horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Inland Bays and brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake. “I’m always excited to go to a new place and learn about new systems,” Sura said. 

The art of pivoting

During her senior year, Sura started applying to graduate school. She wanted to turn her attention to marine mammals and study their behavior. She already had a ton of research experience and was even a published author. She felt prepared to make the jump and only applied to marine mammal labs. She did land interviews at two of the schools, which is an accomplishment, but in the end, “I didn’t get accepted into any of them,” Sura shared.

One of the programs was not able to secure funding to support graduate students that year. “It’s not necessarily about you and your credentials,” Sura said, which is an important lesson that all scientists learn. Sometimes there are forces outside of your control, and all you can do is move on and change course, which is exactly what Sura did. 

She ultimately returned to the University of Notre Dame to complete her Masters. She continued work she had started as an undergraduate researching brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake, Utah. 

While she was working on her master’s, Sura “was really accepting the fact that [she] was an ecologist.” She enjoyed small scale experiments and field work, but wanted a change in scenery for her next research position. She also saw another opportunity to fulfill her dream of being a marine biologist. During her second round of applications, she prioritized applying to ecology-focused labs that studied tropical marine systems, such as coral reefs. While she was working on her master’s, Sura was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a prestigious award for graduate students. This fellowship provides three years of funding, and Sura was able to take that funding to her next position.

She was accepted into Dr. Peggy Fong’s lab at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Sura researched the resilience of coral reef systems in Moorea, French Polynesia. Throughout her PhD, Sura would spend the summers in Moorea conducting field research and then return to UCLA during the school year to look at video footage and analyze data. One day, the UCLA lab Sura worked in was broken into, and the hard drive with all of her data was stolen. It required yet another pivot from Sura. She was able to supplement her lost research with data collected from others in Moorea to finish her PhD work. 

Sura snorkeling in Moorea, French Polynesia

“Being able to ask similar questions in different systems is really interesting.” As she reflects on her early career, she also noted that she prioritized “asking questions that have some connection to human impacts on systems.” 

Toward the end of her PhD, Sura came across an advertisement for a postdoctoral researcher position at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) in Alabama, which offered her yet another big change. She spent two years studying seagrass and salt marsh systems in Alabama. 

One of the biggest changes during this position was that she no longer had to travel across the world to conduct field work. She could conduct field work year-round on the Gulf coast. She often had multiple long field days in a row, but loved this new experience. She reflected on how interesting it was to be able to easily head back to the same field sites season after season to assess changes. This position also gave her experience in the Gulf of Mexico, which turned out to be very useful.

The move to data synthesis

Her position at DISL led her to apply for her current position as a postdoctoral researcher for the NCEAS GEI. NCEAS is a research center affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara which focuses on conducting science that informs solutions. The GEI is a $3.5 million partnership between NCEAS and the NOAA RESTORE Science Program. The Initiative supports working groups and postdoctoral researchers to conduct synthesis in three main areas – fisheries, climate change, and the ecological impacts of management. There is a subtle distinction between data synthesis rather than analysis. Synthesis entails pulling together datasets from multiple sources and using the combined resources to answer large-scale questions. 

Sura was able to bring her knowledge of the Gulf of Mexico and pair it with the resources available in Santa Barbara to answer new questions. Sura was excited for yet another shift as she went from a field intensive position to a more data and synthesis focused position. Sura has spent her time with the Offshore Wind and Fisheries group led by Dr. Holden Harris and Will Klajbor. The goal of this working group is to synthesize data and create ecosystem models to assess the impacts of offshore wind on fish and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. 

One of the main components of Sura’s day-to-day work is writing several manuscripts in collaboration with other working group members. The development of offshore wind infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico is planned but has not yet been implemented. Sura is using what is known from oil and gas infrastructure and other artificial structures to assess potential wind impacts. She is also using this synthesis work to highlight knowledge gaps to identify research priorities for the Gulf of Mexico. 

Collaboration is Key

Throughout our conversation, Sura emphasized the collaborative nature and team-based approach of the work she is doing at NCEAS. This collaboration extends even beyond the original members of the working group. As Sura and another postdoc, Dr. Ray Czaja, started to work on their synthesis of offshore wind impacts, a manuscript with very similar themes was published. With journals prioritizing ‘novel’ research, it can be hard to hear that someone published before you did. Scientists often view this as a start of a competition with the other authors. Instead, Sura saw this as an opportunity to pivot and collaborate

Sura and Czaja reached out to the first author on the publication, Dr. Anaëlle Lemasson. They started discussions on how they could build upon Lemasson’s work and what gaps Sura and her colleagues may be able to fill. Ultimately, Lemasson and her colleague Dr. Antony Knights traveled from overseas to attend the working group meeting that occurred this past November. “The beauty of [NCEAS] is that they promote the sharing of knowledge and also building off of [that] knowledge,” Sura said. Sura was appreciative of the fact that NCEAS is flexible with where the working groups can go with their synthesis. Through conversations at the working group meeting, Sura and colleagues shifted their aims and refined their analysis and now have the start of a paper they are hoping to submit for publication in the next few months. It was mind blowing to Sura to see how fast a project could progress with such intensive collaboration and the resources available at NCEAS. 

Additionally, within the core team, Sura appreciated that the two team leads, Harris and Klajbor, involved her and Czaja, from the very beginning. “It was great to have those open conversations,” Sura said. She feels like a valued member of the team and enjoys meeting regularly with her team to discuss their progress as well as their more informal conversations. Through these interactions, Sura was able to develop a stronger relationship with her mentors. Sura received professional advice, and she was able to learn about their career trajectories and what it is like to work for federal agencies, such as NOAA. 

The future for Sura

Sura’s two years at NCEAS will end this August, when she will transition to being an instructor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. She will be teaching environmental science, and she noted the interdisciplinary nature of her NCEAS working group is helping prepare her for this new role. Both NCEAS and the field of environmental science focus on applied research and promote collaboration with a diverse group of researchers, including social scientists. She will be able to continue her research with its focus on human impacts. It is a nine-month position, so she plans to stay connected with her current NCEAS working group and continue to collaborate with them. She has always been passionate about teaching and mentoring undergraduate students and is excited to train future generations of environmental scientists. 

Use the following links to learn more about NCEAS and the Gulf Ecosystem Initiative. Do you have an idea for a working group or interested in becoming an NCEAS post-doc? Applications are due March 14th, 2025!