Dr. Joe Zuccarello received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, this was in the days when that university did not give grades, just written evaluations! I then was a technician in the laboratory of the phycologist Lynda Goff for several years before I did my Master degree (Marine Biology) again at UC Santa Cruz with Dr Goff (on red algal parasites). I then moved to UC Berkeley for a PhD (Botany, 1993) supervised by John West. My degree was on red algal parasites (again) and their host specificity, plus a few other things. Like all PhD’s I learned a lot about my research area, I became a card-carrying phycologist. It was here that I was introduced to PCR, I remember molecular biology before PCR! I then travelled studying algae wherever I could (Texas, Australia, UK, the Netherlands) as a post-doc, this is basically continued training and experience in science, it is becoming a normal procedure in science if you want an academic position. I arrived at VUW in 2004. I have continued to study algae

Molecular Biology, Phycology