News and Events

Press Releases

Pepperdine Professors Awarded by National Science Foundation 

May 10, 2006 - With National Science Foundation support, Karen Martin, Frank R. Seaver Chair in Natural Science and professor of biology, and colleague Tom Vandergon, professor of biology, will host the annual meeting of the Southern California Academy of Sciences (SCAS) on May 12 and 13 on Pepperdine's Seaver College campus in Malibu. 

SCAS will meet in conjunction with the Southern California Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) and the California Estuarine Research Society (CERS). To be attended by some 400 individuals, the meeting will provide opportunities for student presentations and furthering the scientific efforts of all groups represented.

The first-of-its-kind collaborative meeting is expected to draw a diverse crowd of faculty, doctoral, undergraduate and even high school students from around the country, in addition to government workers.

The conference attendees can look forward to observing the unique, endangered and preserved landscape near and on the Pepperdine campus through in-depth guided walking tours offered by three botanists, including Stephen Davis, Pepperdine Distinguished Professor of Biology, who has studied Malibu's natural habitat for the past two decades.

Karen Martin is best known for her expertise on grunion, fish that beach themselves each spring to mate in the sand along California's coast, and her work with the Grunion Greeter Program. Her classes include marine biology, biology of animals, and general physiology. Tom Vandergon teaches "Biology of Cells" and "Science as a Way of Knowing" in the Seaver College Natural Science Division. His academic interests include the characterization of hemoglobins and hemoglobin genes.

For more information about the conference, please click here, or contact Karen Martin at (310) 506-4808.