Ph.D. 2011 with Tomas Hrbek
Pascal is an avid marine biologist and an accomplished molecular biologist. Pascal is studying diversity and composition of microorganism communities associated with the mucus coat of the elkhorn coral Acropora palmata. He is in particularly interested if there is an association with particular species or strains of microorganism and the white band disease. An additional important question is if there exists geographic variation in microorganismal community composition, and how does this affect white band disease susceptibility. Pascal obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Biology program of the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras campus, and has held several postdoc positions in France and USA since then.