I am a fourth-year undergraduate student at Brown University, working towards an ScB in Biology with a Marine Focus.
 
I have been fascinated by the ocean since I was little – some of my best childhood memories are of tide pool explorations and trips to the beach. I first became interested in marine science after reading a book about Dr. Ballard’s discovery of the Titanic in third grade.
 
I joined the Witman Lab during the fall of my freshman year, and have been analyzing photo and video from the lab’s work in the Gulf of Maine and in the Galapagos Islands. This includes identification of predators, urchins, and other invertebrates. I just returned from a summer of fieldwork in the Galapagos, where I worked on the lab’s long-term monitoring project at sites around the archipelago, measuring community responses to the El Niño/La Niña oscillations. I am also studying the appearance of a cyanobacterial bloom during the recent strong El Nino event, which will be the focus of my senior thesis.
 
For me, ecology is about working in a complex environment, and using observation and experimentation to study how the different components of that environment interact. Once we put together some of the puzzle pieces, we start to get an idea of ecosystem function that can be used to predict the effects of future stresses on the system.
 
My research interests include large-scale community ecology, science communication, and deep-sea biology and exploration.