About
I'm a researcher and teacher studying how energy propagates in the marine environment. I received a BS in Biology and Earth Science from UC Santa Cruz, where I worked with the McCarthy and Kudela labs on stable isotopes and phytoplankton. After graduation I continued studying phytoplankton in the Cloern lab at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Chavez lab at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) — where I got hooked on optics and ocean tech. Now at Oregon State, I research phytoplankton-light interactions, instrument development, and kelp forest ecology. You can see a summary of some current projects below. If I'm not in the lab you'll probably find me swimming, diving, or lost in the woods.
Current Research
Hyperspectral Fingerprints for Harmful Algal Blooms
Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are aggregations of algae that pose a risk to human health and/or aquatic ecosystems. Toxigenic species, like Pseudo-nitzschia, are capable of shutting down commercial fisheries along the entire US West Coast and have caused the mass mortalities and strandings of marine mammals and seabirds. We are investigating hyperspectral ocean color "fingerprints" to identify these harmful algal bloom species remotely, using satellites or drones. This may provide West Coast fisheries and aquaculture an early warning system before toxins shut down harvests.
OCEAN-EYE: Open-Source Optical Sensors
Commercial oceanographic instruments are expensive, delicate, and proprietary — which often makes quality data inaccessible for the communities that need it most. OCEAN-EYE (Ocean & Coastal Environments Autonomous Network for Ecosystem Yield Evaluation) is a suite of open-source, low-cost optical sensors designed for citizen science and environmental monitoring. We build them, deploy them, and share everything: hardware, code, and data.
Particle Size Distribution in Coastal Ecosystems
The size of organisms (particles) in the ocean is a first-order measure of how efficiently energy moves through the food web and how much carbon is exported to depth. We're measuring particle size distributions — from plankton to fish — across nearshore kelp forests to understand trophic transfer efficiency and quantify sustainable harvests for the communities that depend on these ecosystems. We monitor these systems with a suite of novel imaging technologies and classification algorithms to derive the abundance, size, and community composition of these coastal ecosystems.
HyperNAV
HyperNAV is a cutting-edge satellite vicarious calibration system used to validate products from NASA's latest satellite mission, PACE. The system consists of two hyperspectral radiometers (0.4 nm spectral sampling frequency) attached to an autonomous profiling float for daily satellite matchups. I have been fortunate to work with Dr. Andrew Barnard deploying, calibrating, and characterizing these instruments at Oregon State University in collaboration with labs at the University of Maine and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. HyperNAV data can be found here.
Publications
Conference Presentations
Research Cruises
Contact
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