Marin Science Seminar (MSS) is a free science event for teens & community in Marin County, California. The seminar includes a presentation with question and answer period and is open to all. It takes place six Wednesday evenings per semester in a physiology classroom at Terra Linda High School in San Rafael.

Speakers are scientists, technologists, mathematicians, engineers, medical professionals & computer programmers. Topics presented are in an area of the speaker’s expertise, geared to interested high school students.

Allison Payne is a graduate student researcher with the Hines Lab at San Francisco State’s Estuary and Ocean Science Center, where she is working on her M.S. in Marine and Estuarine Science. Her thesis is looking at the scars on humpback whales in the Gulf of the Farallones to assess their interactions with fisheries, small vessels, natural predators, and more. She is also a researcher with the Marine Mammal Center Cetacean Field Research team, where she studies harbor porpoises, humpback whales, gray whales, and bottlenose dolphins. She collects much of the data for these projects while working as a naturalist for San Francisco Whale Tours.