Two researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (SOEST) have been selected to receive National Science Foundation (NSF) EPSCoR Research Fellows awards.

The awards will support Helen Janiszewski of the and Lenore Pipes of the (PBRC) as they develop new directions in fiber-optic geophysical sensing and reconstructing ancient marine ecosystems.

“What鈥檚 exciting about these fellowships is that they give Helen and Lenore the opportunity to take their research in new directions and build on that work at SOEST,” said Rebecca Chung, SOEST director of research development, who worked with Janiszewski and Pipes on developing their fellowship proposals.

Turning submarine cables into seismic sensors

Janiszewski, an associate professor of earth sciences, will lead a project focused on distributed acoustic sensing (DAS)—a technology that enables telecommunications fiber-optic cables to function as dense, continuous arrays of seismic sensors. This work has potential applications for earthquake and tsunami hazard research in Hawaiʻi.

Despite Hawaiʻi sitting at the nexus of the Pacific submarine cable network, local DAS infrastructure and expertise remain limited. Janiszewski aims to establish the technical and collaborative foundation necessary to develop DAS capability at 糖心视频 M膩noa, enabling her to lead fiber-optic sensing research and education in Hawaiʻi and the broader Pacific. Janiszewski will use the pilot data to build an initial seismic event catalog for the Hawaiʻi region, establishing workflows that can be expanded to additional cable systems as they become available.

Unlocking biological history from ancient marine sediments

Pipes, an assistant professor in PBRC, will develop computational methods to recover biological information from ancient DNA preserved in seafloor sediments, helping to reconstruct past marine communities and build historical baselines for understanding how ocean biodiversity responds to climate change.

In standard marine environments, ancient DNA preserved in deep-sea sediments degrades into extremely short, damaged fragments. Current methods can mistake that damage for evolutionary change, making it difficult to accurately identify the organisms represented in the samples. Pipes will develop new computational methods that account for ancient DNA damage. The approach could recover highly degraded genetic material.

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