Toshi Urakawa

Professor of Environmental Science

Toshi Urakawa joined the Department of Marine and Ecological Sciences at FGCU in 2010. His fields of interest are environmental cleanup technology and biodiversity. After completing his doctoral degree with a study of cold-loving (psychrophilic/psychrotolerant) marine microorganisms and systematics of Vibrionaceae at the University of Tokyo, he continued his research as a postdoctoral researcher in Dave Stahl’s lab in Northwestern University and the University of Washington. In these places, he studied molecular microbial ecology. In his early professional carriers, he studied the nitrogen cycle and the problem of eutrophication and dead zone (i.e. oxygen depletion) at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japanese EPA) and the University of Tokyo in Japan. Before joining FGCU, he studied ammonia-oxidizing archaea and genomics in Dave Stahl’s lab at UW for a better understanding of the nitrogen cycle. At FGCU, he studies biogeochemical cycles in southwest Florida and biological and engineering water qualification technology as reducing means of human disturbance of aquatic environments. Recently he initiated conservation biology studies. Toshi teaches marine science classes, general ecology, and microbial ecology at FGCU.