Hi y’all, I’m Laurel!
Like a lot of kids, I wanted to become a marine biologist when I grew up. Now, I’m making it happen! Ever since I can remember, I have always had a passion and interest in our planet’s underwater world. I find myself becoming more and more enamored with it every single day. As marine biologists, we have some of the most complex, interesting, and exciting jobs in the STEM field (although I may be a little biased). It’s not every day that you get to live your childhood dream, and I am so incredibly grateful to get to do so.

I am currently a Master’s student at California State University, Northridge, working in Dr. Nyssa Silbiger’s Quantitative Marine Ecology Lab. To read more about my master’s thesis, click here and feel free to reach out with questions!

In exciting news, I was awarded the 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! I am ecstatic to be an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and can’t wait to bring this funding into a PhD program next year. To learn more about the NSF GRFP, check out their website here.

After finishing my master’s, I will be continuing my education in a PhD program at UCLA with Dr. Mónica Medina. While I am still working on forming a project for my dissertation, I hope to build upon my master’s thesis and understand how changes in biogeochemistry over large time scales directly impact the coral microbiome.