About
My passion for science and the environment began as a middle school student winning third prize at the regional science fair with a botany-related project. My love of botany further budded during my undergraduate years where I investigated if sunflowers were able to hyperaccumulate metals from the soil. During this time, I began to wonder how we were impacting our environment and to what extent. To answer this question for myself, I began a winding course of an education through the field of biology beginning first at a medical school as an intern performing breast cancer research; then as a doctoral student discovering how metals affect the human body at the cellular and DNA level and why they may cause disease; and finally working on a project looking at the concentrations of metals and flame retardants in whales from all over the globe including some from the most remote locations. Everywhere I looked whether in a petri dish, microscope, 20 feet up on a platform of a sailboat, or in an office analyzing big data sets, I could see evidence of how humans were affecting their environment, which consequently affects all the organisms that depend on it including endangered species and ourselves. I am passionate about contributing to the conservation, protection, and management of our oceans whether in my backyard or across the globe, the marine life residing within it and the humans that depend on it and also educating other scientists, law-makers, businesses, the public and even my own children to how they may help too!
Joined
January 2016
