Large-scale impacts of micro-scale life.

Research Bio:

I investigate interactions occuring in plankton at the microscale. The ocean teems with marine life, much of which is too small to be seen with the naked eye. Planktonic organisms ranging in size from micrometres to centimetres must navigate a complex fluid environment to find food, avoid predators, and in the case of transient planktonic organisms, locate suitable areas to settle out of the plankton.

Plankton encounter a vast array of environmental cues in the water column, encompassing physical cues like turbulence, light, and sound waves, as well as biological and chemical cues such as the exudates from predator, prey, host species, as well as conspecifics. The intepretation of these cues and the resultant behavioral responses by planktonic organisms can mediate survival and success in the water column.

I completed my PhD in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in 2016 with Lauren Mullineaux (Biology) and Karl Helfrich (Physical Oceanography). My PhD work considered the effects of water column cues (turbulence, light and conspecific chemical exudates), individually and interactively, on the swimming behavior of larval invertebrates at different stages of development.

I did postdoctoral work with Roman Stocker's lab at the Institute for Environmental Engineering at ETH Zürich. In my postdoc work, I investigated how phytoplankton and marine bacteria modify their behavior and genetic regulation in response to a broad range of "adverse" environmental conditions: highly turbulent flow, micro- and hyper-gravity, and the sea surface microlayer.

Opportunities:

I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, located in beautiful St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. I have openings for Masters and PhD students (starting in January 2023) on various projects in microscale ocean biophysics; interested students should contact me by email here. I myself came to biology late from an applied math background, I strongly encourage students interested in interdisciplinary work straddling the lines between biology, math, and physics (I welcome all these backgrounds!) to get in touch with me.