Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Five Falmouth Academy students received a total of seven prizes at the annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition, which supports and celebrates young artistic talent. The regional competition is co-sponsored by the Boston Globe and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Silver key award winners include Alice Tan ’21 for her painting, “Oedipus Rex,” Ethan Fan ’20 for his photograph, “Grandma,” and Nate Holmes ’24 for his photograph, “Fisherman in the Shadows.” Alice Tan ’21 also received two honorable mentions for her two paintings, “Antigone: What Would You Die For?” and “Girls in Flower.” Noah Manning ’24 received an honorable mention for his photograph, “30 Seconds of Ghosts” and Aubryn Dubois ’25 received an honorable mention for her illustration, “Glass Drawing.”
Students Publish in Nature, Finding Evidence of Life Beneath the Ocean Floor FA faculty member Dr. Virginia (Ginny) Edgcomb, a microbiologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, recently published a ground-breaking study in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. She and her co-authors, including two Falmouth Academy alumnae, Becca Cox ’18 and Sarah Lott ’18, identified microbial life living deep beneath the ocean floor in the Earth’s lower oceanic crust—considered, says Edgcomb, to be one of the last frontiers of exploration for life on this planet. Cox and Lott worked in Edgcomb’s lab after school and during summers while at Falmouth Academy, assisting with the extraction of DNA for those studies. “Nature and Science are the two top scientific journals and most scientists—let alone high school students—never publish there at all,” says Edgcomb. “This is a remarkable achievement for two young scientists who were high school students at the time of their contributions.” Edgcomb’s team, which included scientists from China, Germany, France, and the U.S., analyzed samples from the Atlantis Bank—an undersea ridge in the Indian Ocean. This research enhances our understanding of the potential scope of carbon cycling on Earth as well as its habitable biosphere.
Above: “Glass Drawing” by Aubryn Dubois ’25 Left: “Oedipus Rex” by Alice Tan ’21
Above: Sarah Lott ’18 (top) and Becca Cox (bottom) working in the WHOI Edgcomb Laboratory, Marine Microbial Ecology The GAM
SPRING 2020
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