About Me

As a child, I was fascinated by rocks and minerals, and often took weekly trips to the local rock shop. After attending an Astronomy summer program in upstate New York during high school, I started college at UMass Amherst as an Astronomy major. I added Geology as a second degree program, graduating in 2007 with B.S. degrees in Astronomy and Geology, and a minor in Physics.

As an undergraduate, I worked on two research projects. During my junior year, I worked with Dr. Daniel Macintosh in the Astronomy department on a project that involved categorizing images of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to better understand the environments of major galaxy mergers. For my senior thesis project in Geology, I worked with Dr. Mark Leckie measuring stable isotopes on foraminifera and neodymium isotopes on fossil fish debris from a Florida Straits sediment core. This project was my first introduction to foraminifera and paleoceanography, and I've been hooked ever since!

Photo of me at sea holding a sediment core off side of ship

Graduate Research:
I completed my M.S. in Marine and Atmospheric Sciences in 2010 from Stony Brook University. I worked with Dr. David Black on a foraminiferal assemblage project using Cariaco Basin sediment. I developed an ultra high-resolution record of tropical Atlantic climate variability across Dansgaard-Oeschger Event 12.

In 2015 I received my PhD in Oceanography from Texas A&M University. I worked with Dr. Matthew Schmidt on a variety of projects involving paleotemperature proxies and climate reconstructions during the last glacial and deglacial periods. I had the opportunity to go on three month-long research cruises to the Eastern Equatorial Pacific, Central Tropical Pacific, and the North Atlantic.

Postdoctoral Research:
In August of 2015 I began a post-doctoral research position with Dr, David Lund at the University of Connecticut, Avery Point. My main research project involved understanding the mechanisms of atmospheric carbon dioxide rise during the last deglaciation through analyses of carbon isotopes in planktonic and benthic foraminifera.

In October 2017, I began a post-doctoral position at Old Dominion University. I am worked on an NSF funded project to reconstruct ENSO and tropical Pacific mean state variability across the abrupt climate events of the last glacial period. I also had an active role in the advisement of four Master's students and one undergraduate thesis researcher.