Kelly Jones
Charleston, SC

Kelly Jones

Kelly Jones will enter the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington to pursue a Master’s degree in Environmental Health. Her graduate research will focus on advancing technologies for detection of enteric pathogens associated with non-point source pollution (NPS) in marine environments, with an added emphasis on improving risk assessment strategies by evaluating new viability approaches for these organisms. As a researcher at NOAA’s Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, South Carolina, she helped local and international colleagues develop detection methods for harmful algae and marine biotoxins, thus laying the foundation for her current interests in molecular detection methodology and coastal health management.  She hopes the tools developed during her graduate work will supplement the limitations of the NPS monitoring protocols currently in practice, and will ultimately improve coastal waters for the public, as well as for species within vulnerable marine environments

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Kelly Kearney

Kelly Kearney
Princeton, NJ

Ms. Kearney is currently pursuing her doctoral degree at Princeton University, working with Jorge Sarmiento in the Department of Geosciences.  Her research focuses on incorporating upper trophic level species (i.e. anything above the level of zooplankton) and top-down forcing factors into traditional ocean biogeochemical models that focus on nutrient cycling and primary production.  With this model, Kelly hopes to investigate and assess the importance of the various factors affecting oceanic food webs, including both bottom-up climate forcing and top-down anthropogenic effects.

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Emily Klein

Emily Klein
Newmarket, NH

Ms. Klein completed her undergraduate degree in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) with a minor in Photography. While attending UCSD, she became interested in marine ecology and conservation through study abroad in Australia and a graduate course at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Emily graduated in 2003 and spent the next several years gaining field research experience with various projects including investigating the presence of Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) in Yellowstone National Park, mist-netting forest birds in Hawai’i and Jamaica, and tracking river otters (Lutra canadensis) and investigating the effects of fire as a management tool in Kentucky. She rturned to the field of marine ecosystem when she moved to New Hampshire to intern at the University of New Hampshire (UNH).  She is currently completing a master’s degree on the historical herring fishery in the Gulf of Maine.  Her doctorate research will be in the Natural Resources and Earth Systems Science (NRESS) program at UNH.  For her PhD, Emily is looking to expand her master’s thesis analysis to include additional input variables and species, and to explore the application of additional statistical analysis, including the capacity for developing future scenarios. She will be working closely with Catherine Marzin, the History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) group, and the NOAA Sanctuaries to expand our ability to investigate historical marine ecology. She hopes such work will provide greater understanding of long-term ecosystem dynamics and information for future management and conservation.

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Erin LaBrecque

Erin LaBrecque
Beaufort, NC

Ms. LaBrecque is currently pursuing her doctorate in marine biology from Duke University.  After spending years on research vessels observing the patchy nature of the oceans, she became interested in determining what biological and physical factors influence species distributions.  Using spatial habitat modeling, Ms. LaBrecque plans to study the biological and physical influences of frontal zones on the distribution of upper trophic level predators at multiple spatial and temporal scales.  Her research will lead to the development of successful marine management plans and add to the growing body of knowledge on adaptive MPA management.  Her goal is to obtain a research position at either an academic institution or a government agency where she can continue to produce science which will contribute to the successful management and conservation of our precious marine resources.

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Kathleen Morrow

Kathleen Morrow
Auburn, AL

Ms. Morrow has been inspired by the complexity of coral reef ecosystems since childhood and has extensively studied the ecology of cnidarians for the past 9 years.  She completed her B.S. degree with a minor in chemistry from The University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) in May 2003.  She completed an undergraduate honors thesis on the effect of Diadema antillarum, long-spined sea urchins, on coral-algal interactions.  Ms. Morrow completed a Master’s degree in August 2006 from California State University at Northridge.  Her Master’s research was conducted along Santa Catalina Island and primarily focused on the study of kelp forest community ecology and biomechanics. These studies examined the interactions between a common corallimorpharian anemone and macroalgae, and are applicable to her current research on coral-algal competition on Caribbean coral reefs.  Ms. Morrow has recently completed her second year as a Ph.D. student at Auburn University.  Her dissertation research examines the community structure and stability of coral-algal-microbial associations.  Ms. Morrow’s doctoral research will quantify the natural microbial community associated with non-diseased corals and those exposed to physical and chemical interactions with macroalgae using culture-dependent and -independent methods (e.g. molecular analysis of bacterial community fingerprints). She hopes to develop a baseline for comparison so that researchers may better determine the mechanisms leading to the initiation and progression of coral disease.  These studies are currently conducted off the coast of Summerland Key, Florida and St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

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Erinn Muller

Erinn Muller
Sebastian, FL

Ms. Muller is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in marine biology at Florida Institute of Technology.   Her research focuses on understanding the link between coral-bleaching events and disease outbreaks.  Anomalously high-water temperatures can increase coral-disease prevalence by either influencing pathogen concentrations or virulence, or by increasing host susceptibility through bleaching.  Ms. Muller’s previous research showed that bleached colonies of the threatened species, Acropora palmata, lost more tissue from disease than unbleached colonies. The resulting publication introduced the novel ‘compromised-host hypothesis’, which states that corals stressed from bleaching are more susceptible to disease than corals that do not bleach. Under the threat of future global climate change and rising ocean temperatures, coral-bleaching events are predicted to increase in frequency and severity making corals more susceptible to infectious diseases.  Ms. Muller’s research examines the connection between environmental stress, host-susceptibility, and disease by analyzing the spatial and temporal dynamics of coral diseases using a Bayesian modeling approach.  Environmental stressors are also being applied to corals within a laboratory setting to test the compromised-host hypothesis.  Ultimately, her research will provide policy makers and managers the tools to prevent the future loss of coral from disease outbreaks.

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Rachel Neuenhoff

Rachel Neuenhoff
Galveston, TX

Ms. Neuenhoff is pursuing her M.S. degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University.  She is investigating population parameters of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) stranded along coastal Texas by fitting growth curves to length-at-age data.  Currently, growth models are fit to cetacean length-at-age data with little regard to basic model assumptions or life history strategies that may influence growth.  Ms. Neuenhoff will address these issues by incorporating growth-modeling methodologies used among terrestrial mammalian taxa in an effort to improve population parameter estimation.  This will ultimately produce a growth curve suitable for direct demographic comparisons among multiple regions and will contribute to our overall understanding of bottlenose dolphin population dynamics.  Upon completion of her M.S. degree program, Ms. Neuenhoff plans to pursue a PhD in Fisheries Management or Quantitative Ecology.

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Danielle Staaf

Danielle Shulman Staaf
Pacific Grove, CA

Ms. Staaf is pursuing a doctorate in biology at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California. Her dissertation is focused on the recent range expansion of the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas, from its historical home off South America and Mexico into the waters of the California Current. She is interested in relating reproductive and developmental biology to ecologically relevant factors in the geographical distribution of organisms. In addition to conducting her research, she loves infecting others with her excitement about biology through traditional teaching environments as well as through the development of creative outreach approaches. Ms. Staaf believes that children and adults learn best when they are engaged and entertained. She plans to apply her skills and interests in writing, art, and design to the presentation of science in novel ways, with the ultimate goals of promoting conservation through increased awareness and training new generations of curious minds.

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Kimberly Tenggardjaja

Kimbery Tenggardjaja
Northridge, CA

Ms. Tenggardjaja is pursuing her doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she plans on studying the nature and scale of connectivity and larval dispersal in marine populations.  During a post-college internship at Boston University, she examined the phylogeographic structure and gene flow of a seastar (Acanthaster plancii ) and a stomatopod (Haptosquilla glyptocercus) across Indonesia and the Western Pacific, and these projects kindled her interest in understanding connectivity in marine populations and how patterns of larval dispersal can lead to genetic differentiation among populations.  Ms. Tenggardjaja is especially interested in studying coral reef organisms because, while coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet, more than half of them are significantly threatened by human activity.   By contributing to a better understanding of marine larval dispersal and connectivity, she hopes to conduct research that will be useful in the management of marine sanctuaries and the conservation of coral reef ecosystems.  She believes that the education and training she receives from her graduate studies will prepare her for a future career in conservation.

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