Short Bio
As a child, I didn’t have many waterways near my home growing up in Brooklyn, New York. During summertime, I would take the train to Coney Island beach for about an hour. My days there were spent searching the shoreline for washed up sea creatures. As discoveries grew, my interest peaked. A few feet from the shoreline, I dug a hole in the sand and filled it with seawater to create a makeshift touch pool. Then, unknowingly, I took my first steps towards my future career, by observing their anatomy and admiring their textures.
Research Interest
In our current era of rapid global warming, the polar regions are experiencing the most significant impact, leading to the retreat of perennial glaciers. This, in turn, affects phytoplankton blooms and community composition in coastal waters. My current research interests revolve around exploring phytoplankton ecology in the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). Specifically, I am focused on understanding glacial retreat dynamics, the trace metal composition of glacial meltwater, and how the availability of metals influences phytoplankton communities. This, in turn, plays a key role in shaping the biogeochemistry of nonmetals like carbon and nitrogen. A subtopic area of interest is the effects of copper (Cu) in low iron conditions, particularly in the context of glacial melt into coastal waters. Additionally, I aim to examine phytoplankton variations in fluorescence under iron-limited conditions.