Meet the Team
We are a dedicated group of students and early career researchers spanning diverse research interests on reef science, career goals, and parts of the globe.
Steering Committee
Morgan is from Indiana, USA. She completed her M.S. in Marine Science at Nova Southeastern University with a focus on coral reproduction and energy acquisition. She now works in Hawai‘i as a contractor for the NOAA Restoration Center where she helps manage federally-funded restoration grants in the U.S. Pacific Islands region.
Chair: Morgan Short
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Contractor (NOAA/ERT)
(she/her)
Igor is an oceanographer with a PhD and MSc degree in Earth Sciences from the Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil. His research focuses on the study of pollution sources in marine protected areas, as well as coral conservation and reef restoration. As a research fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), his work focuses on coral resilience and bleaching research that informs management options for reef restoration initiatives on Maui, Hawaii.
Vice Chair: Igor Pessoa
University of California, Santa Cruz (he/him)
Jenna is from Frankfurt, Germany. She is a PhD student interested in the contributions of genetic variation and gene expression to the adaptive capacity of corals to thermal stress.
Secretary: Jenna Dilworth
University of Southern California
(she/her)
Michelle is a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Aberdeen where she is researching the diversity and function of Caribbean coral rubble beds. Having lived in the Caribbean for five years, where she worked as a SCUBA diving instructor, she regards the region as her second home. Her research was inspired by the observations she made of juvenile fish using rubble beds. If you don’t see Michelle underwater, she’ll be outdoors in the mountains and forests of Scotland playing with her dogs.
Treasurer & EDI Liason: Michelle Taylor
University of Aberdeen
(she/her)
Reefbites Blog
Sandra graduated from a Master’s in Ecology and Ecosystem Sciences from the University of Rhode Island where she studied the effect of coral restoration on the reef community. She currently lives in Puerto Rico and works as a Boat Groundings Specialist for the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment in the day and as a Marine Biologist Guide in the Bioluminescent Bay at night.
Blog Manager: Sandra Schleier Hernández
Department of Natural Resources & Environment, Puerto Rico
(she/her)
Julia is a Canadian-American, originally from Texas but currently based in Canada. She completed her MSc jointly at McGill University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and is now working towards her PhD at the University of Alberta under Dr. Stephanie Green. Julia’s research uses a functional ecology lens to assess and predict coral restoration outcomes at multiple scales.
Content Curator: Julia Briand
McGill University & the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
(she/her)
Miranda has a double degree in marine biology and science journalism/communications from Jacksonville University in Florida and is nearing the finish line of her MSc in marine ecology from Southern Cross University in Australia. Her research, conducted at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, looks at using assisted evolution (heat-evolved symbionts) to increase the fitness of coral juveniles for reef restoration. She is particularly interested in symbiotic relationships that benefit coral reef ecosystems.
Co-Chief Editor: Miranda Spencer Altice
Southern Cross University
(she/her)
Vivian is from the bustling island city of Singapore but has been studying and working in the US since 2015. She obtained a double degree in Molecular Environmental Biology and Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a PhD student in Biology at Penn State University, where she studies the symbiotic relationships between bacteria and dinoflagellates within coral and jellyfish holobionts. She can usually be found in the lab or at home trying out a new hobby.
Lead Content Curator: Vivian Yifan Li
Penn State University
(she/her)
Krista is a recent graduate of Nova Southeastern University, where she completed her MS in Marine Science in the Marine Larval Ecology and Recruitment Laboratory. Her research focuses on the reproductive ecology of corals, with a particular focus on anthropogenic effects on spawning synchrony.
Co-Chief Editor: Krista Laforest
Nova Southeastern University
(she/her)
Post Coordinator: Jill Ashey
University of Rhode Island
(she/her)
Andrea, native of El Salvador, is currently a PhD student at North Carolina State University in the USA. Her research focuses on evaluating the multiple environmental stressors impacts on marine organisms’ health and immunity. Besides scuba diving, Andrea loves hiking, yoga, and spending time with her friends and family.
Translation post coordinator: Andrea Landaverde
North Carolina State University
(she/her)
Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion
Meg is a master’s student at UNC-Wilmington in the USA and works in the Coral REEF (Reproduction and Evolutionary Ecology- Fogarty) Lab. Her research focuses on optimizing the light spectrum for coral recruits in their earliest life history stages. This research will help up-scale coral restoration efforts by using land-based nurseries to raise genetically diverse recruits from ex-situ coral spawning.
Team Lead: Meg Van Horn
University of North Carolina - Wilmington
(she/her)
DeVant'e Dawson
University of Florida
(he/him)
Shannon Dixon
Ohio State University
(she/her)
Early Career Committee
'm a marine biologist on a fancy mission to understand the ocean's secrets. My journey began in Egypt, earning a BSc (Hons) and MSc in marine biology. I then moved to the UK for my PhD, made a splash in the USA with my first postdoc, and currently ride the waves of discovery in the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. I focus on how corals face climate change challenges from the gene to ecosystem level. Off-duty, I'm a dad to a crazy boy who hilariously debates why pets aren't my thing.
Team Lead: Eslam O. Osman
KAUST
(he/him)
Tina is a Belgian/British postdoctoral researcher in the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is particularly interested in connectivity, both energetic and organismal, and in understanding the direct and indirect relationships that structure coral reef communities. Her current research involves modelling different control scenarios for managing Crown of Thorns starfish outbreaks on the Great Barrier Reef as part of the COTS Control Innovation Program.
Christina Skinner
University of Queensland
(she/her)
Nick is a British postdoctoral researcher at the National Coral Reef Institute, Nova Southeastern University, USA, where he also completed his PhD. His research focuses on the impact of climate change and local environmental pressures on benthic community dynamics, spatial heterogeneity and resilience.
Nicholas Jonas
Nova Southeastern University
(he/him)
Ninon Martinez
Boston University & University of Belize Environmental Research Institute
(she/her)
Social Media & Communications
Rachel is a Northern Irish Postdoc based in Konstanz looking into coral gene signatures of ocean stress & resilience.
X: Team Lead: Rachel Alderdice
University of Konstanz
(she/her)
Rebecca recently got her Masters degree from Bangor University, Wales in Marine Environmental Protection and now works as a Scientific Officer for Cornwall Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority. She is interested in the drivers of resilience in coral reefs and is currently looking for PhD opportunities in this field.
Instagram Team Lead: Rebecca Turner
Cornwall Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority
(she/her)
Joyce is working as an assistant Technical Editor for an USAID project in the Philippines. She got her MSc at Ghent University in Belgium where she majored in Marine Environmental Health. Her research interests revolve around coral reef fish ecology and fisheries management. Outside of research, Joyce plays badminton and explores growing chickens.
X: Joyce Velos
University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute
(she/her)
Instagram Team Lead: Natascha Varona
University of Miami, USA
(she/her)
Clara is from an island country in Southeast Asia known as Singapore. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Experimental Marine Ecology Laboratory at the National University of Singapore. Her research revolves around understanding the impact of microplastics on coral reefs, and their distribution in both the physical environment and the food web.
X: Clara Yong
National University of Singapore
(she/her)
Instagram: Hamid Darkhal
SBU University, Iran
(he/him)
X: Dani Nembhard
Environmental Consultant, Jamaica
(she/her)
Instagram: Rosa-Maria Cañedo
Environmental consultant and Illustrator, Peru
(she/her)
Skill & Professional Development
Maya is from Seattle, WA (USA) where she grew up searching tidepools for cool new creatures. She is pursuing her PhD in the Castillo Corals lab at UNC. Her research focuses on how coral-associated algal and microbial communities may aid corals in their survival in multi-stressor environments, and help predict coral resilience under future climate change.
Team Lead: Maya Powell
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(she/her)
Ben is a 4th-year doctoral candidate who is interested in the roles of community and seascape ecology in the transmission of marine infectious diseases. He helped document a devastating outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) in the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2019, and then followed the disease to Louisiana State University, where he now models the epidemiology of SCTLD local to Florida and the US Virgin Islands.
Team Lead: Ben Farmer
Louisiana State University
(he/him)
Mahsa Alidoostsalimi
University of Melbourne
(she/her)
Ronen Liberman
Tel Aviv University/NSU
(he/him)
Sarah Solomon
University of Amsterdam
(she/her)
Daniel Olivares-Zambrano
University of Southern California
(he/him)
Website
Ross is from the beautiful island of Bohol, Philippines. She finished her PhD at the National University of Singapore in 2019 where she continued as a postdoc for three years. She moved to Germany in 2022 for her second postdoc with the Molecular Evolutionary Biology Group at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center. Her research focuses on understanding the complexity of obligate symbiotic systems, such as coral and lichen, in relation to their acclimatization capacities and trait variation.
Team Lead: Rosa Celia Poquita-Du
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center
(she/her)
Kirstin is a PhD student at Newcastle University in the UK and her research interests are understanding the evolution of sociality and cognition, using fishes as model organisms. She is currently investigating the social functions of colour patterns in anemonefishes through both laboratory experiments at Boston University and field studies in Papua New Guinea.
Kirstin Gaffney
Newcastle University
(she/her)
Jasmine is a 2nd year PhD student at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia. Her project aims to elucidate the biogeochemical signals released by corals under stress conditions. This project hopes to use the absence or presence of these biogeochemical signals as a bioindicator for stress prior to bleaching events. In her free time, she likes to spend her time outdoors hiking, surfing, and running.
Jasmine Haskell
Souther Cross University
(she/her)
Nepsis is from a small town called Baní in the southwest of the Dominican Republic. She did her undergrad at PUCMM (in the DR) and got her masters in Marine Biology at NSU Florida. Before her PhD at U of M she worked on the assisted sexual reproduction of stony corals, larval rearing and recruit grow out. Currently, she is interested in understanding how coral assemblages on artificial reefs can help us recover coral reef function, and finding less active solutions to restore coral reefs. In her spare time, Nepsis loves cooking, and snuggling with her wife and her cats to watch TV.
Nepsis Garcia
University of Michigan
(she/they)
Caitlin is a 2nd year PhD student at the University of Alberta in Canada. Her research aims to investigate the dynamics of coral predators on restored reef sites alongside developing accessible tools and methodologies that can be used across varied contexts to facilitate coral reef restoration. When not conducting research, Caitlin enjoys exploring the great outdoors and spending as much time underwater as possible!
Caitlin Hall
University of Alberta
(she/her)
Translation
Diana hails from Colombia, where she did her undergrad and master's research on coral reefs' evolution and ecology, and the interaction with their microbiota and predators. She is a Ph.D. student using genomics to explore Conus diversity and biology.
Lead Translator & Language Representative, Spanish: Diana Carolina Vergara-Florez
University of Michigan
(she/her)
Translation Post Curator: Andrea Landaverde
North Carolina State University
(she/her)
Marina is from Munich, Germany. She recently graduated with a M.Sc. in Management from the Technical University of Munich and has further degrees in Engineering Science (B.Sc.) and Architecture (German Diplom). Marina has previously lived and studied for three years in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Her interests are in relation to coral reef restoration as a nature-based solution for coastal protection and the maintenance of biodiversity.
Language Representative, German: Marina Elisabeth Rottmueller
Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
(she/her)
Italian: Martina Burgo
James Cook University
(she/her)
Born in Mexico with a Brazilian family, Ana is a Biologist and a PhD candidate investigating the effects of environmental stressors on ecological interactions between corals and other benthic organisms. She is also engaged in disseminating ocean literacy and scientific content to the public.
Portuguese & Spanish: Ana Carolina Grillo
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
(she/her)
Arabic: Nouhaila Aguergour
Al Akhawayn University
(she/her)
Jessica is a Swiss-Brazilian biologist, born in Bern and raised in the warm Northeast region of Brazil. She holds a master's and PhD in Ecology and is currently a postdoctoral researcher studying the effects of rising ocean temperatures on coral reproduction. Her research focuses on understanding how thermal stress impacts coral ecophysiology and their responses under varying conditions, such as changes in nutrients, light, and temperature.
Portuguese: Jessica Bleuel
Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil
(she/her)
Alumni
Post Coordinator: Bobbie Renfro
Florida State University
(she/her)
Twitter: Katrina Munsterman
University of Michigan
(she/her, they/them)
EDI: Kristina Black
University of Texas- Austin
(she/her)
Content curator: Henrique Bravo
University of Groningen
(he/him)
Webmaster: Nicola Kriefall
(she/her)
EDI: Emily Chei
The University of Hong Kong
(she/her)
Content curator: Paige Strudwick
University of Technology Sydney
(she/her)
ECR Team Lead: James Cant
University of St. Andrews
(he/him)
German Translation Coordinator: Selma Mezger
University of Bremen
(she/her)
Treasurer/ECR Team: Violeta Martinez Castillo
Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur
(she/her)
Thank you to our founders.
Our chapter began as a committee in 2016 thanks to the hard work of: Jessica Bellworthy (Chair), Sandra Schleier (Reefbites), Maha Cziesielski (Reefbites), Claire Lewis (Twitter), Hannah Reich (Twitter), Carlos Carvajal (Instagram), and Laura Richardson (Student Events). For three years, they ran the student committee and in 2020, recruited the current student chapter team. We would not be where we are today without you!