simply tentacular

Background

I was born and raised in the Queen City of Cincinnati, Ohio. The majority of my middle and high school years were spent playing golf while getting involved in conservation and marine science through volunteer opportunities. I followed the family tradition of attending the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC (my parents and brother also went to UofSC). Here, my interest in research has grown as I have become more involved in laboratories and graduate student projects. I attended the University of the Virgin Islands in the spring of 2022 through the National Student Exchange program. If you would like to read about my experiences at UVI or see some pictures of the island, check out the “UVI Journal” section. Today, I am back at UofSC finishing up my senior year!

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Research Interests

My general research interests include community and population ecology, behavioral ecology, parasite ecology, predator-prey dynamics, and invertebrate ecology.

While I have a lot of research areas I am interested in pursuing, the overlapping concept I enjoy in all of them is investigating how biotic or abiotic factors influence species, populations, and communities of marine invertebrates.

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Future Aspirations

In the spring of 2023, I will be conducting my thesis project through the U of SC Honors College. My mentor is Dr. Jeffry Dudycha, a professor at UofSC whose lab I have been involved with since the fall of 2019. I have decided to extend my NOAA Ernest F. Hollings scholarship into an Honors thesis, where I will learn to use the data I collected over the summer in R and GIS.

In the fall of 2023, I will begin my PhD in Marine Science at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill! My advisor is Dr. Joel Fodrie, and I will be spending the majority of my doctorate at UNC’s Institute for Marine Sciences (IMS). Past graduate school, I hope to then have a career focused on researching marine invertebrate ecology and contribute to helping aspiring high school/undergraduate scientists achieve their goals. I could not be where I am today without the help of countless professors and researchers. I would love to give the same support I have felt to students in the future.