I am writing this testimonial for Alexander Rodway as his direct supervisor during the two-month internship at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. During this time, he was assigned to process samples from a big experiment we were conducting in the Red Sea. He was also contributing to the weekly production of probiotics our lab is doing to apply them in the field. He was also helping with the fieldwork in the reef where we have our experimental setup.

He was an outstanding student and achieved great diving and lab skills in record time during these two months. He has amazing capabilities to learn. In the field, he learned to inoculate coral colonies with probiotics and assist in the field tasks for monitoring, sampling, and fitness measurements in situ. In the lab, he learned how to manipulate and grow microbes in isolation, concentrate them, and prepare them for manual inoculation in the field. He also learned to process coral fragments and measure their area, perform zooxanthella counts and quantify pigments. He was able to use lab equipment such as centrifuge, spectrophotometry, and flow cytometry. He was very productive and helpful during his stay at KAUST.

At the personal level, he is an easy-going person with incredible motivation and kindness. He gets on well with everybody, but at the same time, he works hard and is always happy to help his colleagues and ready to learn something new. I’ve been supervising students in the lab as a postdoc and/or research scientist in the UK and Saudi Arabia during the last 6 years and I was really impressed with the potential of Alexander. I do not doubt Alexander's potential and capabilities to continue his professional career. I would strongly recommend Alexander Rodway for any position without reservation.

Francisca C. Garcia