Professor Charles Yarish
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
The University of Connecticut
1 University Place
Stamford, CT 06901-2315, USA
Tel. No. 203-251-8432 (Office)
Tel. No. 203-251-8530 (Research Lab)
Email: charles.yarish@uconn.edu
Professor Charles Yarish received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University (1976) and then joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut (1976) where he is in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and The Department of Marine Sciences. He has also been an adjunct Professor of Marine Sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, visiting Scientist at the Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, Germany, a visiting Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and most recently, a Guest Professor at Shanghai Fisheries University, China. He has served with many organizations including the International Executive Service Corps’ Aquacultural Project (Kenya), member of the Organizing Committee & the Executive Secretariat for the Vth International Phycological Congress, Qingdao, China and The Advisory Board of the Institute of BioSciences (Halifax), National Research Council of Canada and a member of the RCN for the US National Science Foundation genome project on Porphyra. Prof. Yarish received the 1992 Marinalg Award’s First Prize at the XIVth International Seaweed Symposium, Brittany, France, for his work in East Africa (Kenya) judged to be the most useful to the economic development of the world seaweed industry. He has also been a national lecturer, the elected secretary, member of the Phycological of America’s Executive Committee and President (2001). He has been an invited participant in many international invited symposia and meetings in Canada, Chile, Cuba, Germany, Ireland, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, The Netherlands and the USA, which have dealt with the ecophysiology, biogeography and aquaculture of seaweeds. At UCONN, he developed an internationally known Seaweed Marine Biotechnology Laboratory for seaweed R&D. He intimately involved in the development of the global seaweed aquaculture industry and in particular in the USA. He is most interested in the development of integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) and nutrient bioextraction systems where seaweeds are a key extractive component. He has published extensively, edited several books the most recent one published by Springer in 2014 entitled “Long Island Sound: Prospects for the Urban Sea.” He has been a co-principal investigator numerous grants award by the National, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts Sea Grant College Programs, The US Environmental Protection Agency, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, BARD (US-Israel Binational Agriculture Research & Development Fund), as well as The States of Connecticut and New York. Most recently, he received several research grants and contracts from The US DOE ARPAe MARINER Program to assist in developing scalable seaweed farms in Alaska, Florida and Puerto Rico coastal waters and well as develop a major domestication program for sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima). In August 2007, he was the recipient of The 2007 Faculty Recognition Award, which recognizes sustained outstanding achievements in teaching, research and services benefiting University of Connecticut at Stamford. In 2008, Prof. Yarish was elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science & Engineering. In 2012, Prof. Yarish received the University of Connecticut’s Provost Award for Public Engagement and Outreach. In 2013, Prof. Yarish and his coauthors received the Fernald Award for the best paper of the year published in Rhodora and in 2014 received the speaker of the year award Connecticut Society of Cosmetic Chemists. In 2019, Prof. Yarish received the Phycological Society of America’s Award of Excellence for his sustained scholarly contributions in, and impact, on the field of phycology over his career.
Prof. Yarish co-edited a book entitled Long Island Sound: Prospects for the Urban Sea. Springer Science + Business Media, NY. Most recently, he and his colleagues published “Seaweed aquaculture: cultivation technologies, challenges and its ecosystem services” (doi.org/10.4490/algae.2017.32.3.3); “Insights into the red algae and eukaryotic evolution from the genome of Porphyra umbilicalis (Bangiophyceae, Rhodophyta)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/14/1703088114.full.pdf?with-ds=yes; and Mendoza, W.G., S. Mendola, J.K. Kim, C. Yarish, A. Velloze, B. G. Mitchell. Land-based drip-irrigated culture of Ulva compressa: the effect of culture platform design and nutrient concentration on biomass production and protein content. PLOS ONE (published June 27, 2018, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199287&type=printable).
Prof. Yarish has been featured in the public media including:
CBS News “60 Minutes” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaweed-farming-and-its-surprising-benefits/ (originally aired on April 29, 2018 and July 15, 2018); on the Third season of “The Whole Truth with David Eisenhower.” The episode on which I was featured, “Ending Absolute Poverty: Small Things with Big Impacts,” will aired as the ninth of the 13 episodes of this season, and available to view on their YouTube page on May 20 (immediately after airing on WHYY in Philadelphia); Earthrise Communications highlighting his UCONN work. My former post-doc/former doctoral student, Simona Augyte, does the honors in the film: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/earthrise/ .