Kristin O’Brien is an Associate Professor of Biology University of Alaska Institute of Arctic Biology. She is interested in the unique biochemical and physiological characteristics that have evolved in fishes living in the chronically cold environment of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean. One of the most striking characteristics among the Antarctic fishes of the family Channichthyidae, known commonly as icefish, is the loss of the oxygen-binding protein hemoglobin. Without this protein, the blood of an icefish runs white, not red. Research in Dr. O’Brien’s laboratory is aimed at understanding how icefishes evolved as they did, and how they function.