About

I received a BS in Biology and Earth Sciences from The Ohio State University in 2011, where I studied the physiology of coral energetics under environmental stress. I continued this work during my MS at Ohio State in the Grottoli lab examining the stable carbon isotope ratios of coral lipids to understand how mode of nutrition is altered by thermal stress. I graduated with an MS in 2013 and began a PhD at UNC Chapel Hill in the Castillo coral ecophysiology lab. Here I explored the relationships between thermal history and coral and symbiont diversity, as well as coral growth.

I am presently a postdoctoral research fellow working with the Castillo and Bruno labs here at UNC. My main focus is understanding the organismal physiology of corals in response to stressors. Particularly, do corals from different environmental backgrounds possess the tools to adapt and/or acclimatize to changing conditions as the climate continues to warm. I am also keenly interested in stepping back and taking a look at global scale coral reef recovery from and resilience to disturbance events.