BAR HARBOR —  Hanna Mogensen, daughter of Mark Mogensen and Chris Gillis of Auburn, received the Best Undergraduate Poster award at the Student Symposium held at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory on July 30.

Mogensen is one of 37 high school and college students spending the summer conducting research at MDIBL. She graduated from Edward Little High School and is a senior at Smith College.

At the symposium, each student presents his or her work in posters or 15-minute talks for the scientists, their families and the public at the annual symposium.

“At MDIBL, we believe it’s important for scientists to be able to communicate the implications of their work to a variety of audiences,” said Charles Wray, Ph.D., MDIBL’s director of education. “Each of our students is mentored by one of our scientists and designs his or her own independent research project, which they present at the symposium. Hanna is part of an amazing group of students this year at MDIBL from Maine and across the U.S.”

At MDIBL, Hanna worked with Jane Disney, Ph.D., director of the Community Environmental Health Laboratory, which studies water quality and marine habitat restoration.

Mogensen’s poster was titled, “Pseudo-nitzschia: An Emerging Public Health Issue in the Gulf of Maine.” Pseudo-nitzschia causes amnesic shellfish poisoning and is increasingly common in local waters and shellfish. Her work was funded by the Research Experience for Undergraduates program of the National Science Foundation.