This last year has not been the best. If anything, that’s a total understatement. But at least it may have been the best time to start a program like LOREX with ASLO. Because the program is aimed at cultivating and developing international collaborations, LOREX was like having a cheat introduction on how to move your research online. Just before the pandemic struck and we were all forced to be remote, the LOREX students were already logging into zoom, setting profile pictures, and meeting each other a few months previous. In fact, we were even starting to collaborate online outside of our main projects as well. I had been working with a team of five other fellow students and early career scientists to write a perspective piece about why we have hope for coral reefs, and what we as young scientist have to bring to the table moving forward. The members of the team included Catherine Nowakowski, Hunter Hughes, Connor Love, Angelique Rosa Marin, Keiko Wilkins, and Dr. Maha J. Cziesielski.

Having this team helped me to be able to visualize what remote working would be like back in March 2020 when everything else in the world was very quickly feeling uncertain. Prior to the pandemic, we had outlined five different components to what brings us hope for coral reefs as a team and worked collaboratively on multiple documents to refine the key points we wanted to share. Having this experience directly translated to finishing the semester of classes transitioned to online and helped me feel more upbeat about what I would be able to accomplish despite the major change to everyone’s day to day lives.

Through out the rest of the year, we meet regularly, and continued our collaboration. And then, through rounds of edits, working with our mentors, and plenty of video chats, we were able to pull together an international collaboration of our own before having even completing the intended program. While this certainly has not been the time line any of use expected these things to happen on, having seen the success of our work and having a final product in hand before even setting off to Canada is uplifting and has me excited for the accomplishments I know are to come as we all complete our LOREX projects! (Also! Check out the schematic I got to make for the papers and maybe even go read about why you should also have hope for corals as well in the ASLO Bulletin Volume 30 Issue 1!)

By Catherine Nowakowski

Collaborative Papers
Channeling Hope for Reefs: A Series of Perspectives from Young Coral Reef Scientists
By Maha Cziesielski, Hunter Hughes,Connor Love, Angelique Rosa Marin, Catrina Nowakowski, and Keiko W. Wilkins
Short‐ and Long‐Term Visions for Protecting Coral Reefs
By Keiko W. Wilkins, Angelique Rosa‐Marín, Maha Cziesielski, Hunter Hughes, Connor Love, and Catherine Nowakowski
Communicating Hope for Coral Reefs
By Catherine Nowakowski, Hunter Hughes, Connor Love, Angelique Rosa Marin, Keiko Wilkins, and Maha J. Cziesielski
Rethinking Collaboration for Coral Reef Science
By Connor Love, Maha J. Cziesielski, Hunter Hughes, Catherine Nowakowski, Angelique Rosa Marín, and Keiko W. Wilkins
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE: Perspectives from the Next Generation of Coral Scientists
By Hunter Hughes, Maha J. Cziesielski, Connor Love, Catherine Nowakowski, Angelique Rosa Marín, and Keiko W. Wilkins