RESTON, VA – The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) Research Board announced in November that it will award nearly $38 million to individuals and teams studying the effects of oil on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and public health. A total of 22 research proposals are being funded under this most recent GoMRI competition.

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) is a 10-year independent research program investigating the effects of the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010. The mission of GoMRI is to improve society’s ability to understand and mitigate the impacts of hydrocarbon pollution and stressors on the marine environment and public health. An independent and academic 20-member Research Board makes the funding and research direction decisions to ensure the intellectual quality, effectiveness and academic independence of the research. Information about the Research Board is available at http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/gri-research-board/. The program was established through a $500 million financial commitment from BP. 

Georgia Tech scientists were part of one of the teams funded in the category of chemical evolution and biological degradation of the petroleum/dispersant systems and subsequent interaction with coastal, open-ocean, and deep-water ecosystems.

This team was led by Professor Markus Huettel of Florida State University and the project title is “A Systems Approach to Improve Predictions of Biodegredation and Ecosystem Recovery in Coastal Marine Sediments Impacted by Oil Spills”.

Georgia Tech microbiologists Joel Kostka (Biology) and Kostas Konstantinidis (Environmental Engineering) are co-PIs on this project, which provides the team with about $1 million for this research over 3 years.

The main goals of this project are to link microbial degradation of buried oil and associated transport processes, and to integrate these data into a model that allows predictions of pathways and rates of oil degradation, and thus, forecasting recovery pathways in future oil spills. Specifically, the Kostka group will use molecular and cultivation-based techniques to determine microbial community structure and succession associated with petroleum hydrocarbons buried in sub-, inter- and supratidal coastal sands using in-situ measurements and controlled laboratory mesocosm incubations that simulate in-situ conditions.  They will directly link microbial community dynamics with the chemical evolution of the petroleum hydrocarbons.  This work is a continuation of research highlighted recently on the GoMRI website:

http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/study-early-responder-microbial-groups-differed-over-time-in-oiled-beach-sands/