“We are really concerned about sea grasses declining  all over the globe, actually disappearing,” says Edwin Cruz-Rivera, associate professor of biology at the University of the Virgin Islands and recipient of a NSF Track 4 grant.

The National Science Foundation has provided for only 28 EPSCoR jurisdictions in the United States. The Virgin Islands Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR), hosted by the University of the Virgin Islands, is one them.