I am a David H. Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Fellow based in Simon Levin’s lab at Princeton University. I earned my PhD from Rutgers University working with Olaf Jensen.

I study ecological and social interactions in aquatic and coastal systems in order to improve our management, conservation, and resilience of aquatic species and the human communities that depend on them.  My research has two major foci: (1) assessing adaptation and resilience among US fishing communities through analysis of both quantitative commercial fishing data and qualitative interview data, and (2) studying trophic patterns among aquatic macro-organisms using chemical tracers (bulk stable isotope ratios and fatty acid profiles).

My postdoctoral work focuses on the ecological, economic, and social ramifications of community-supported fishery programs and other supply chains in which harvesters sell seafood directly to consumers.  I am also working with an interdisciplinary working group of graduate students at the Socio-Ecological Synthesis Center (SESYNC) and a Coastal SEES project based at Rutgers to study effects of climate change on Northeast US fishing communities.  My dissertation work focused on trophic interactions among freshwater fish in a near-pristine lake in Mongolia, pelagic predators in the Pacific Ocean, and jellyfish off the coast of New Jersey.

I have mentored undergraduate projects on priority effects in commercial traps, sex differences in jellyfish, resource partitioning in salmonids, and mortality in catch-and-release fisheries.  I used to teach high school science and have an ongoing interest in science pedagogy.  I continue to work to engage youth – especially youth of color and those who are first in their families to go to college – in research.