Graduate Spotlight
Master's student Cole Anderson received an award (spring 2025) and used the funding to cover preparation and exam fees for his FAA drone license.
Carlos Morantes Ariza has been awarded the prestigious Northeast Aquatic Plant Management Society (NEAPMS) Graduate Student Scholarship for 2025. This scholarship will support Carlos's vital research focused on enhancing the management of an invasive aquatic plant on Long Island. NEAPMS recognized Carlos's "innovative approach and commitment to improving the management of aquatic systems," and expressed confidence that his work "will make a significant contribution to the field." Congratulations, Carlos!
Julia Dovi, (2024 Slobodkin Award recipient) traveled to Charlotte, NC for the National Shellfisheries Association meeting to broaden her perspectives on the volume and diversity of science conducted in the field of marine invertebrates. With the help of the Department of Ecology and Evolution and the Slobodkin Award, Dovi was able to travel around the world to share ideas, experimental results, and learn about the life as a research scientist and potential PhD student in the field. Also, congratulations to Julia for being accepted in the Yale Environmental Fellows Program this summer, where Dovi will be placed across nationally recognized nonprofits, social justice organizations, philanthropic organizations, environmental media outlets, policy think tanks, governmental institutions and grassroots environmental organizations.
Caitlin Blackwell, (2024 Student Excellence Award recipient) attended the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Open Science Conference in Pucón, Chile and the Waterbird Society and Pacific Seabird Group Joint Meeting in Costa Rica. At those key international conferences, Kate presented the first chapter of her dissertation research on remote sensing for tracking birds.
Doctoral student Kate Blackwell received an award (spring 2025) to attend a Physalia course on Assembly and Annotation of Genomes.
Nicolas Anderson (2024 Student Excellence Award recipient) presented findings on the settlement and
metamorphosis of the ribbed mussel, Geukensia demissa, in response to environmental
cues. He attended the National Shellfish Association Annual Conference in Charlotte,
North Carolina, where he gained insights into current trends and emerging technologies
for his future research and career.
Chelsi Napoli (2024 Student Excellence Award recipient) went to the other side of the world, in Perth, Australia to present her work on humpback whale vessel strikes to a packed house at the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals.
Megan Wyatt (2024 Student Excellence Award recipient) visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to research fossil rats from the late Miocene (12-7 million years ago). Her research focuses on how landscape history promotes ecological diversity in a family of rats native to North America. This portion of her dissertation seeks to assess ecological disparities and turnover of Heteromyidae in connection to reported local landscape change in the Dove Spring Formation in California's Mojave Desert.
PhD student Imogene Welles shared her dissertation research on white-footed mouse populations and their isotopic
niche dynamics in the Long Island Central Pine Barrens at the American Society of
Mammalogists annual meeting in Boulder, CO.
Sixto Taveras Lopez presented a poster "Evaluating Ecosystem Services of Coastal Marsh Restoration in Barnegat Bay, NJ" at the New England Estuarine Research Society (NEERS) conference in Freeport, Maine.
Sixto Taveras Lopez was selected for the Dr. W. Burghardt Turner Dissertation Fellowship.
Evan Abreu along with alum Gena Sbeglia presented "A quasi-experimental study of the differential impacts of explanation
construction vs. explanation critique on evolution learning" at the National Association
for Research in Science Teaching in Denver, CO.
In July, Tara Smiley along with PhD student Sam Lavin and postdoc Paul Barrett joined a new team of paleontologists and geologists working with the Turkana Basin
Institute. The team is studying Locherangan, a 17-million-year-old fossil site in
the Turkana Basin in Kenya. The field season was remarkably productive, with the team
discovering more than 300 fossils including primates, carnivores, rodents, reptiles,
and more.
Sarah Vaccaro was in the field in September collecting tissue samples from tenrecs in and around
Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar. These samples will enable her to carry out genomic,
epigenetic, and isotopic analyses to investigate the mechanisms used by organisms
to cope with anthropogenic disturbance.
Rupert Ikeh received the Dean Prize for the best graduate student poster at the New England Estuarine Research Society Meeting in Freeport, Maine. His presentation was "Spatial patterns in salt marsh plant stress derived from photosynthesis measures and satellite imagery analysis."
