2024
RI NSF EPSCoR C-Aim Summer Research Fellowship
The Graduate School of Oceanography
To close out my undergraduate research career, I was recently selected for the RI NSF EPSCoR SURF Program, where I will be applying the methods that I have been developing for the past two semesters to a 10-week ($600/week) research project. I am excited and honored to be able to continue pursuing my research interests within the Menden-Deuer Plankton Ecology laboratory over this upcoming summer.
2023-2024
EN 715 Endeavor and AR 77 Neil Armstrong US Shelf Long-Term Ecological Survey
Research Cruises
Participated in a five-day (11-16 October) and sixe-day (3-8 May) research cruises with The Menden-Deuer Plankton Lab on the Neil Armstrong AR 77 and the Endeavor EN 715. Helped with Chlorophyll fluorometer measurements, filtration experiments, flowcytometer measurements, CTD setup and take down and assisted chief scientist Dr. Heidi Sosik and other PhD students.
2023
NOAA Hollings Internship: Saipan and Guam
NOAA PIRO Office, Saipan CNMI
Last summer through the Ernest F. NOAA Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship, I had the honor to travel to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, to conduct a research project under NOAA mentor Steven McKagan. The NOAA Hollings Scholarship grants successful recipients with a paid 10-week NOAA Internship ($1,000/week) and academic assistance of $19,000 ($9,500 per year) for two years of full-time study within the Junior and Senior Year. For this internship, I traveled to Guam for a week and assessed coral damage around the island presumably caused by Super Typhoon Mawar and showed it visually using ArcGIS mapping software. I presented this research at the NOAA Hollings Scholars Symposium, and I am excited to take that oral presentation to the 52nd Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in April 2024.
2023-2024
Menden-Deuer Plankton Laboratory and The Beinart Lab
The Graduate School of Oceanography
At URI, I am a member of the Menden-Deuer Plankton Ecology Laboratory and have been developing methods to observe picoplankton using flow cytometry for our specified marine environment. I have been working on this method development with marine research associate, Dr. Pierre Marrec and I have been dedicating nine hours a week to this research project since Fall 2023, which is approximately 225 hours across both semesters. Through this lab, I was invited to participate in the Northeast US Shelf Long-Term Ecological Research Cruise which took place in October 2023 and was also invited back to participate in the spring Northeast US Shelf Long-Term Ecological Research Cruise in May 2024. I have also been helping in Dr. Roxanne Beinart’s Lab with DNA extractions.
2022
The Coral Microbiome
ASU Bermuda Institute Of Ocean Sciences
In fall 2022, I traveled to the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) and earned my AAUS Scientific Diver Qualification. During my time at BIOS, I also had the opportunity to conduct a four-week research project which focused on comparing the microbial composition and abundance of in situ and ex situ coral specimens, which I collected myself using SCUBA. This is where I was given the opportunity to explore and discover my passion for marine microbiology. This research has been presented at Ocean Sciences Meeting 2024 and will also be presented at the 21st Annual Microbial Sciences Symposium on April 20th, 2024, at Harvard University.
2022