A Newport resident and University of Rhode Island professor has been awarded one of the nation’s most prestigious early-career faculty awards to study one of Antarctica’s most mysterious predators.
Sarah Kienle, an assistant professor in URI’s natural resources science department, received a five-year, $848,602 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program award to investigate leopard seals in the Southern Ocean. The NSF CAREER award is considered one of the top honors for early-career faculty who show potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.
Kienle’s research focuses on a fascinating biological puzzle: why female leopard seals are significantly larger than their male counterparts, representing an extreme example of what scientists call “female-biased dimorphism” in mammals.
“It actually took me several hours to process the award email before I started sharing the news with my lab, family, and friends,” Kienle said. “It’s a prestigious and career-affirming award.”
The project promises to generate new data on the life, physiology and biology of leopard seals, which remain one of the ocean’s most enigmatic apex predators. This information is critical for understanding how the species evolved and predicting their resilience as Antarctica faces environmental changes.
The research will bring together an international team of collaborators, including postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students. URI postdoctoral student Renato Borras-Chavez will coordinate field efforts in Chile to collect some of the first-ever data on leopard seal reproductive behavior, with students joining the fieldwork to gain hands-on experience.
The team will also employ innovative methods to extract life history data from leopard seal teeth collected from museum specimens worldwide. URI postdoctoral student Emily Sperou will lead this effort while training graduate student Patrick Bailey to apply similar techniques to gray wolf teeth.
“This award combines behavior, morphology and physiology in a really cool way to understand the reproductive biology of this enigmatic polar predator,” Kienle said.
As principal investigator of URI’s Comparative Ecophysiology of Animals Lab, Kienle’s research integrates concepts from ecology, physiology, behavior, evolution and conservation. Her work centers on apex predators and their response to environmental change, studying not only leopard seals but also sea lions, whales, wolves and coyotes across multiple continents.
The Newport researcher has conducted fieldwork in North America, South America, Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand, collaborating with researchers, managers and citizen scientists worldwide to study and protect wild animals and their habitats.
The project aligns with the National Science Foundation’s Strategic Vision for Investments in Antarctic and Southern Ocean Research and will include a research-intensive undergraduate course designed to engage students and the public in polar research.
Kienle joined URI’s faculty in 2025, bringing her expertise in comparative biology to the Kingston campus while maintaining her residence in Newport. The research findings will be broadly shared with global audiences, contributing to understanding of how marine predators survive and persist in one of Earth’s most extreme environments.
