Hi there! I’m a graduate student in Dr. Byron Crump’s lab at Oregon State University, where I study microbes and biogeochemistry on the coast of Arctic Alaska as part of the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project. I love learning about how aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are responding to environmental change, how microbial communities form and persist in nature, and how (or whether!) microbial diversity matters for ecosystem processes.

During my time in Dr. Zachary Aanderud’s lab at Brigham Young University, my labmates and I wrote some beginner-level protocols for studying microbes and chemistry in rivers– to check them out, head over to the Environmental Research Methods tab!

My past projects include a study on microbes and biogeochemistry in Arctic stream networks and a survey of microbial diversity in cold desert biocrusts across continents. I also sometimes moonlight as a member of / collaborator with the Wormherders team with Dr. Byron Adams and the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER in Antarctica. This has involved getting to help out with some amazing long-term ecological research projects, being a little cold, and counting many, many nematodes.

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Writing down stream chemistry measurements near the bottom of Trevor Creek in the Alaskan Arctic.