Marc Slattery
2025 Sigma Xi Fellow
For his groundbreaking interdisciplinary work in marine chemical ecology and reef biology and bridging maritime research with pharmaceutical science through mentorship and leadership.
Statement
“Sigma Xi was my introduction to the world of scientific research. As an undergraduate at Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles, CA), I was excited and engaged by the lectures and assigned readings in my biological sciences curriculum. My mentors, officers of the LMU Sigma Xi chapter, provided encouragement and opportunities to become involved in field research that ultimately led to my own research project - a senior thesis on niche partitioning between two species of octopus near San Felipe, Baja Mexico. Upon completion of my thesis project, I was honored with a nomination to Sigma Xi (1980). Since then, I have been an advocate for the mission and ideals of Sigma Xi as a member, officer of the University of Mississippi chapter, delegate to the annual meeting, active research scientist, and now, as a Sigma Xi Fellow. As the faculty mentor to younger generations of scientists, I encourage my students to embrace the broader community of science that Sigma Xi represents, and to apply lessons from disparate fields into their development as research scientists in this age of interdisciplinary research.”
Biography
Marc Slattery is a marine chemical ecologist and natural products chemist. His master’s degree from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (Monterey Bay, CA) examined the roles of natural products on larval settlement and metamorphosis of abalone. He built on this research with a dissertation from the University of Alabama at Birmingham that focused on the ecological roles of chemical compounds produced by sponges and soft corals under the ice in Antarctica. Specifically, he demonstrated that the sponges and soft corals produced natural products that defended them from potential predators, competitors, and pathogens. Similar work during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory demonstrated that defensive compounds produced by tropical soft corals varied with changes in environmental stressors, such as bleaching, as well as during physiological changes associated with reproduction. More recently, he has shown that the microbiome of sponges and soft corals is a critical partnership in the production of natural products (i.e., quantitative and qualitative differences in chemical profiles), and that these vary under extreme conditions found in marine caves and deep reefs (30-100 meters depth).
Dr. Slattery was hired by the School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi to develop a cross-disciplinary program in coral reef chemical ecology and drug discovery. Since many of the organisms studied (e.g., sponges and soft corals) have primitive immune systems, they often rely on natural products to help them fight disease. Those same compounds can be isolated and tested for bioactivity against human diseases such as cancer, bacterial infections, and malaria within the biomedical mission of the School of Pharmacy. In addition, Dr. Slattery has documented changes to coral reefs throughout the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific due to climate change-associated stressors (e.g., elevated temperature and ocean acidification), and anthropogenic impacts (e.g., sedimentation, pollutants, etc.). He has made over 6000 dives in habitats ranging from the polar ice caps to temperate kelp forests and tropical coral reefs, using a variety of techniques, including mixed gas open and closed circuit SCUBA, saturation dives (Aquarius Habitat 2011), and submersible dives to the deep sea.
Dr. Slattery is currently the director of the National Institute for Undersea Science & Technology at the University of Mississippi. He is a past-president of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (2016-2019), and a member of the NSF Polar Programs Diving Control Board (1993-2012; 2023-present). Dr. Slattery was elected as a Fellow of the Explorer’s Club in 2019 for his contributions to marine cave and deep reef research. He has presented briefings to the US Senate (2011) and to the United Nations (2007, 2013) on marine genetic resources, and his research has been profiled in a number of scientific journals, textbooks, websites, and magazines.