PANAJI
A researcher couple – Dr Joaquim Ignacio Goes and Dr Maria Fatima Helga Do Rosario Gomes – have added yet another feather to the cap of global milestones of the Goan diaspora by winning the prestigious Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research award for 2023.
Dr Goes and Dr Helga Gomes won the award for their outstanding contribution to space-earth environmental research through the study on interaction of climate change/material cycle and phytoplankton.
The husband-wife duo are based in the USA working with the Columbia University, New York, where Dr Goes is Lamont Research Professor and Dr Helga Gomes is Research Scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. While Goes hails from Cortalim, Dr Helga Gomes is from Verna.
At Columbia University’s Climate School they are leading the research on phytoplankton dynamics and their impact on the health and biodiversity of Earth ocean ecosystems using satellite ocean colour. Globally too, they are instrumental in promoting research of variation of primary production and their effects on material cycle, ISEE said in the statement announcing the award.
ISEE is one of Japan’s seven Imperial Universities and considered to be in the league of USA’s Ivy League. It aims to develop space-earth environmental research, promote interdisciplinary research and explore the new discipline of space-earth environmental research.
ISEE said in its statement that both Goes and Gomes respectively have 160 and 90 peer-reviewed papers through their time as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at the Institute of Hydrosphere and Atmosphere Sciences (IHAS) of Nagoya University and later developed by joint research with the Hydrospheric-Atmospheric Research Center (HyARC).
Phytoplankton abundance and community composition change due to various environmental factors, including climate change. Phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, supply carbon and energy as organic matter to higher trophic organisms in the aquatic ecosystems.
At ISEE they stayed as foreign visiting Professors in October-December 2015 and also in September-December 2017 and worked with ISEE researchers and graduate students mainly on phytoplankton community structure in the East China Sea, Sea of Japan and the Gulf of Thailand.
They conducted joint research on environmental change and phytoplankton community, including the comparison of the responses to the discharge of large rivers, the Yangtze River and the Amazon River, into the coastal areas, and the ecology of green Noctiluca, a mixotrophic organism with the properties of both plants and animals. The results of this joint research have been published as 11 international co-authored papers with ISEE researchers and graduate students.
