I was awarded a residency funded by the Marjorie and Joseph Rubenson Endowment for Art and Science on Volcan Mountain, CA! WooHoo!

I will study microplastics at Volcan Mountain in the Spring of 2019. I hope to give residents of Southern California a stronger connection to their environment through teaching them about anthropogenic pollution in their backyard. To do so, I will conduct a short citizen science experiment, collecting water and dirt samples from the watershed to quantify the amount of microplastic found in different habitats around Volcan Mountain.

I am very excited about this opportunity and look forward to expanding my microplastic research into terrestrial and freshwater environments.

11/14/2018

• 

• 

• 

I won the Seattle Science Slam #14!! Woohoo.

The Seattle Science Slam is an event every month that allows local scientists to explain their research to the community, in a public and welcoming space. I spoke about how microplastics are ubiquitous in the environment how the average Pacific Northwesterner is contributing to the problem, and what actions we can take. If you’re interested, my talk can be found here.

11/13/2018

In collaboration with Puget Soundkeeper I presented my research on microplastic contamination in the Salish Sea and how it affects marine mussel filtration rates at their Pint Sized Science event. My talk, as well as one from NOAA (Nir Barnea), one from an undergrad at PSU (Marlowe Moser), and a final one from Puget Soundkeeper (Connie Sullivan), was given at Cascade Coffee Works in downtown Seattle, WA and open to the public.

11/9/2018

• 

• 

I gave a talk on my research on The impacts of microplastic on the filter feeding of marine bivalves at WSN this year in Tacoma, WA. This year, the conference held a special section on microplastics, which I was stoked to be a part of.

I am a fourth-year graduate student at University of Washington in the Department of Biology, co-advised by Dr. Emily Carrington (Biology) and Dr. Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño (School of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences).

My research focuses on how microscopic plastic impacts filtration rate of mussels, contamination levels in the Salish Sea, and public policy approaches to mitigation.