Marine Microbes, GRFP, COP27, Oh My: An interview with Dylan Vecchione

Interview by Nicole Reynolds

Dylan Vecchione is a second year Oceanography and Astrobiology dual title PhD Student in Dr. Robert Morris’s lab, working on microbiology and molecular biology. Specifically, he studies host-virus systems of chemoautotrophic microbes in deep-sea extreme environments. I sat down with him in mid-January to chat about his experiences from doing his undergraduate degree at UW Oceanography, to attending the United Nations COP27 conference, going on months-long research cruises, and other adventures beyond.

What got you into oceanography or marine sciences initially?

I was snorkeling in Hawai’i on family vacations, saw these [coral reef] environments, and became fascinated by them, and then also witnessed their rapid decline due to climate change local pollution. That opened my eyes to the fact that these systems are not okay and are being destroyed by human development. That led me to ask many questions about what was going on, many of which couldn’t be answered by my immediate sphere. I started reaching out to local scientists in West Maui, which ended up including the Hawaii Division of Land and Natural Resources, the Coral Reef Alliance, and the University of Hawai’i. Most of the people I emailed never replied because it was a crazy six-year-old sending it.

At six?!

Yeah, I was six-years old at the time, because I loved the coral environment so much- it really captivated me. Snorkeling there and seeing how different it was from everything above the water was exciting to me. It definitely kickstarted my passion for the marine world at a young age.

After talking with the few scientists who did actually reply to my crazy emails, I realized that they were struggling with data collection. There weren’t enough scientists to monitor all of the struggling ecosystems closely. From these discussions, I came up with a tool called the Virtual Reef, where a few people could do dive surveys to virtualize ecosystems, and anyone on the internet could then contribute to data collection. That pioneered the first initiative of what later became the ReefQuest Foundation, which is my NGO.

Dylan diving for ReefQuest in 2015

What was it that brought you to the University of Washington School of Oceanography?

At the start of high school through my sophomore year of undergrad I worked in a solid-state physics lab doing material sciences so coming into my undergraduate degree, I thought I was going to be a physical oceanographer. I was even thinking of a physics or earth and space science double major, but after thinking more deeply, I realized that my interest in material science was more in its applications, like in DNA sequencing.  This led me to think about microbiology. My first step was to talk to the UW Department of Global Health, where I worked with a group called the Center for Health and the Global Environment. We focused on microbial pathogens, specifically shellfish. This work helped me realize that I wasn’t as interested in the policy side of global health work. It was around that time when I took OCEAN 220: Introduction to Field Oceanography with Dr. Robert Morris . After learning more about his research, I talked with him about getting some more experience and learning more about his work by volunteering in his lab, and I ended up really loving it.

There were some challenges with COVID and lab shutdowns, but as we revived the lab culture and I participated in research cruises, it further solidified my love of the work. It confirmed that this was the path that I wanted to take, and that’s what led to the grad school application and where I am now.

People often tell [early career scientists] in oceanography that their paths are nonlinear, and you can’t always anticipate what your direction is, or where your experiences are going to take you. Looking back, they were right, because even though as much as I thought my path would be linear, having discovered a passion for the ocean at a young age, it still was not. I find a lot of value in the experiences that may retrospectively not seem very relevant to your path, but that actually come together in concert in a way that allows me to approach problems from unique vantages.

Dylan presenting his Senior Thesis in 2022

You attended COP27 in 2022, which is the United Nations Climate Change Conference. What brought you there?

One of the cool things that the United Nations offers is delegations for organizations that are non-state members, such as corporations or nonprofit/grassroot organizations. My non-profit organization, the ReefQuest Foundation, was awarded a Research and Independent NGO delegation.  A foundational goal of the organization is to improve the accessibility of science at all levels, so I wanted to sponsor graduate students engaged in climate, policy, and justice work to attend UN Climate Conferences. We began this program by providing delegate sponsorships to graduate students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was also the first year of the Ocean Pavilion, which is a collaboration between Scripps and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and other partners like the American Geophysical Union. It was incredible to be there for the inaugural year of the Ocean Pavilion, because anyone who was interested in doing things related to the ocean would come and chat with us, whether it was a geoengineering startup or other researchers from around the world. Representing the interests of the ocean in the incredible diversity of conversation that took place there was very rewarding. In the future, we’re working with Dr. Maya Tolstoy, the Dean of the College of the Environment to expand ReefQuest’s graduate sponsorship group and hopefully add some UW Graduate Student representation at United Nations conferences, as well as stimulate networking between institutions.

Dylan at COP27 in 2022

How many times have you been at sea and what has been your experience with it?

My first multi-day cruise (kind of the trial-by-fire-cruise) was the two-month Plume Raiders cruise, right before the senior thesis cruise, from early September to early November 2021. Because of COVID travel restriction, we departed and returned out of the Nimitz Marine Facility in San Diego, but the at-sea worked all occurred in the South Pacific, 3000 nautical miles off of Peru! I had never been on a ship like that before, I knew I loved the water, but I was nervous because I didn’t know whether I’d get seasick or what to expect at all. So, I stocked up on sea sickness medication anticipating the worst, but ended up not needing any! That was the cruise that really solidified that I was passionate about this work, and I want to continue doing it. A couple weeks after we returned from Plume Raiders was the senior thesis cruise from Honolulu to San Diego, so I was in Seattle for a laughably short amount of the quarter. After the senior thesis and was on land for a while until a few shorter cruises on the R/V Rachel Carson last year in Puget Sound and helped out on the R/V Thompson’s NSF sea trial.

Plume Raiders cruise in 2021 (onesie photoshoot)

The next multi-day cruise was with the Chief Scientist Julie Huber at WHOI. She’s a deep-sea microbiologist who did her PhD here in Oceanography and Astrobiology. We went out to the Axial seamount on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson with the ROV JASON aboard. We would wake up way too early (or more accurately, never really go to sleep), but we got to see live the incredible hydrothermal vent ecosystems down there. They are just so otherworldly, it looked like you were looking at the Avatar movie or some kind of alien planet. It was my first microbiology-focused cruise and (as with all the cruises I’ve been on) was an extraordinary experience to be in such an extreme environment, seeing incredible parts of the deep sea, doing grueling work, with a fantastic group of people.

ROV Jason Operations Van on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson

I’ll be using data I collected from the Axial cruise and some Puget Sound samples for my next projects looking at host-virus systems and evaluating how different selection pressure might be impacting viral infection dynamics. I’m also doing the Astrobiology dual title, so a lot of viral gene transfer questions are interesting in the context of early evolution. It’s all coming together, not very linearly which is expected, but coming together.

You got the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship; can you talk a little about your journey through applying?

I took Dr. Gabrielle Rocap’s graduate school class as a senior in undergrad, where we applied to the GRFP for the first time. At the time I was interested in the discovery of secondary metabolites in the context of biomedical or therapeutic drugs. It was an interesting experience, and my initial GRFP rejection taught me a lot about grant writing and the institutional priorities of funding agencies. Another criticism from my reviewers was that I needed to really target highly specific outcomes. This can be challenging with discovery-work, since they are highly unknown and hard to target. The feedback helped me go into the second application round with more emphasis on a specific research focus. It was a perfect case study of how failure and rejection with constructive criticism can be a powerful tool to learn from and then try again and succeed.

So, you met Governor of Washington Jay Inslee—how and why did you get that opportunity?

I was on a flight back to Seattle, and I got an email saying that the governor was going to have a town hall the very next day at UW on climate, and they were inviting some grad students to engage in discussion. It was a team of multistate climate scientists and sustainability experts in addition to five graduate students from different departments in the College of the Environment – I was very honored to have been asked to join! The whole premise was to just have a conversation and engage on these topics. It was a bittersweet conversation, as we heard about the worst-case scenario climate projection models, but it was good that we were talking about it and trying to develop some strategies. I was encouraged by the discussion because there was a recognition that we still have so much work to do, that it has to be intentional work, and the urgency/energy to do the work felt genuine.

Gov. Jay Inslee with UW Graduate Students

What’s next for you?

So, I’m in my second year in a six-year MS/PhD program. We’ll usually defend our masters between the second and third year, and the rest of the time will be completing the rest of the PhD. I’m focusing on these host-virus systems, how viruses might control their hosts during infection, sometimes increase the metabolic efficiency of the host, or increase population fitness through gene-transfer. It can apply to a lot of organism classes, but I’m focusing on the prokaryotes (archaea and bacteria) and the viral communities that infect them. Within that, I’m focusing on the deep-sea chemoautotrophs which are the foundation of the food web in the deep sea.

After my PhD, I hope to get on a professorship track in academia, starting by getting a postdoc somewhere, but I’m keeping an open mind for anything new or interesting that comes up for me.

Do you have any closing advice for undergrads where that are where you were two years ago?

I would say that undergrads are given a lot of advice, and it can be overwhelming and hard to manage. I’d say, remember that grad students were where you’re at not that long ago, and we would love to talk to you. We’d be happy to chat if there’re any curiosities you have about the research process, specific research we’re doing, the experience of grad school, the application process, etc. I hope that undergrads can see us as resources. Talk to your TA’s, go to office hours, send us emails, and make connections!