Page 11 - ME Newsletter Fall

SAVING CORAL REEFS SAVING CORAL REEFS
The importance of UMN ME expertise in this work is in the modeling, optimization, and design of novel technologies that allow the team to rapidly converge on workable protocols for cryopreservation of difficult biomaterials. “First forays into a new problem can often be empirical, a ‘just try a few options’ approach,” said Zuchowicz. “From there, developing a reliable, consistent method of cryopreservation is a challenging engineering problem, and that is what we do best.”
In spring 2023, Bischof and Zuchowicz
served as clients for a five-student
undergraduate senior design team
to improve an existing low-cost slow
freezing system used by Smithsonian
and Taronga Zoo partners to freeze
coral sperm. In June 2023, with support
from ATP-Bio and the Smithsonian, the
senior design team traveled to Hawai’i
to test their system during a coral
spawn. More recently, the team has
begun a relationship with the Minnesota
Zoo, which included some preliminary
collaborative field work on the island of
Curaçao to learn robust techniques for the collection and maintenance of juvenile corals, with an eye toward future cooperation in further development of coral cryopreservation technologies.
“We are banking the genetic diversity of coral reefs today to give them their best fighting chance tomorrow.”
— Nikolas Zuchowicz
Five recently graduated UMN ME senior design team members tested an improved field freezing device for coral cells during a coral spawn at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology in June 2023. Photo credit: Nikolas Zuchowicz
ME PhD candidate Nikolas Zuchowicz with an elk-
horn coral during a nighttime spawning collection
dive off the island of Curaçao in September 2024.
Photo credit: Chris Lippens, CARMABI.
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