Katie is a first-year Masters student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  She studies at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and is co-advised by Drs. Megan Donahue and Erik Franklin. Before moving to Hawaii, she earned her B.S. in marine biology at UCLA, where she studied phase shifts on coral reefs and algal defenses. After graduating, she traveled to coastal Ecuador where she studied stream water quality, and also worked for a marine education organization in her home state of California. Most recently, she spent a year in the Dominican Republic working on coral reef restoration and community based conservation initiatives. For her Masters thesis, Katie will be studying reef resilience and how community type affects coral response to nutrient and thermal stress.  She will be a Marine Mammal Observer (MMO) on this cruise. Her duties include spotting animals and recording their position, activity, and other data.

Cruises: