Research Experience

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Research Technician

June 2022 - Present

I am currently participating in multiple projects researching how global change impacts the biology and physiology of animals to shape their behavior and functional roles within coastal ecosystems such as oyster and coral reefs. I assist in lab operations including protein and lipid extraction from coral fragments, keeping of live oysters and snails in flow-through and closed seawater systems, temporal 3D image modeling of oyster settlement structures, data entry/management, and R statistical analysis. Additionally, I coordinate and participate in field operations within Florida’s Apalachicola Bay and Key Largo through vessel operation and towing, SCUBA surveyal and live animal collections as well as deploying of various reef structures to study oyster and urchin recruitment under AAUS standards. I also manage lab supplies and operations including collaborations with the Apalachicola Bay System Initiative and NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center

Research Intern

May 2020 - August 2021

I had the privilege of partnering with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MarineGEO and being advised by Maggie D. Johnson, Ph.D., Post Doctoral Scholar with WHOI. To accomplish this I analyzed Coral Reef Benthic Cover Photo quadrats of Bocas del Toro, Panama from 2016-2019 in CoralNet. Additionally, I mapped coral reef functional diversity using ArcGIS with environmental factors of pH, water temperature, and salinity. All statistic analyses were performed in R. The thesis was presented in August of 2020 remotely for the members of the Northeastern University Marine Science Center. 

Research Intern

September 2018 - August 2019

 I completed my Honors College and Honors Distinction in Environmental Science Thesis on Climate Change in East Boston: Community Impact & Outlook. The project was advised by Paul Kirshen, P.h.D. of the Environmental Science Department, and Sarah Mayorga DeGallo, P.h.D. of the Sociology Department. To accomplish this I created a vulnerability map using climate justice group demographics collected from census data of East Boston. I further supplemented the vulnerability map with a community survey asking East Boston community members how symptoms of Climate Change have affected them and what aid and services they needed and therefore will need in the future. Analysis of the vulnerability of different areas of East Boston and the needs of the community was accomplished using ArcGIS and Qualtrics  

Research Assistant

October 2017 - December 2018

This project was conducted within the UMass Boston Biological Oceanography Analyzed the abundance of Microfibers in oyster samples within the Mystic Watershed as a part of then Ph.D. student Student Catie Tobin's Thesis research under Junaita Urban-Rich, P.h.D. My responsibility was to process oyster samples through Hydrolyzing with Trypsin in a controlled lab environment in order to create slides that can but observed under a microscope. I then counted fiber quantity and measured length on filtered hydrolyzed oyster samples. I had the opportunity to present this research at research colloquiums for the School for the Environment.