Esmira Bibaj is a second-year Ph.D. student at Lehigh University in Dr. Jill McDermott’s Lab. Her research explores the geochemistry of deep-sea hydrothermal fluids and their impact on microbial communities in different hydrothermal systems. The western Galápagos Rift expedition provides an opportunity to examine the influence of a mantle hotspot on fluid chemistry. Esmira will … Continued
Hayley Drennon is a Senior Research Assistant at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). She received a B.S. in Marine Biology and Geology from The College of Charleston, where her participation in the Benthic Acoustic Mapping and Surveying (BEAMS) Program helped shape her fascination of harnessing bathymetric data to advance marine science. Working as a … Continued
Michelle Hauer is a Ph.D. candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography in Dr. Roxanne Beinart’s lab. Generally speaking, she is interested in symbiosis and cooperation in nature. Her dissertation thesis focuses on the population genomics of both free-living and host-associated deep-sea hydrothermal vent microbial symbionts … Continued
Syrmalenia Kotronaki is in her second year of graduate school at Lehigh University at Dr. Santiago Herrera’s lab. She is interested in population genomics and phylogenomics of deep-sea fauna. She earned her B.Sc. in Biology at the University of Crete in 2015, and went on to achieve a M.Sc. in Biological Oceanography at Christian-Albrecht University … Continued
Dr. Jill McDermott is a geochemist and an Associate Professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at Lehigh University. Jill investigates the aqueous and volatile geochemistry and biogeochemistry of diverse seafloor hydrothermal vents around the world. During the cruise to the Western Galápagos Spreading Center, Jill will lead the vent fluid sampling team. The … Continued
Nicole Pittoors is a third year Ph.D. student in Biology at Lehigh University. Advised by Dr. Santiago Herrera, her research involves using metabarcoding to describe the biodiversity and connectivity of mesophotic and deep-sea communities. She is broadly interested in larval ecology and reproductive biology of mesophotic and deep-sea invertebrates. Before Lehigh, Nicole completed a B.Sc. … Continued
Rachel Harris is a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Girguis’ deep-sea biology and engineering lab at Harvard University. She received her A.B. in Biological Sciences and Russian from Wellesley College in 2014, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Geosciences at Princeton in 2017 and 2020, respectively, under the late Tullis Onstott. Rachel’s research explores the habitable … Continued
Jessica Rodgers is an incoming first-year Ph.D. student at Lehigh University under the advisement of Dr. Jill McDermott. She is particularly interested in the biogeochemistry of hydrothermal systems and how they work to support an abundance of life in the deep sea. She hopes that her work will have important implications for marine policy. Jessica … Continued
Jada Siverand is a third-year Ph.D. Candidate at Lehigh University in Dr. Jill McDermott’s Lab. Her doctoral research uses geochemistry to investigate subseafloor fluid movement and fluid-rock reactions occurring at the high-temperature hydrothermal vents in the eastern tropical Pacific. On this cruise, she will be collecting fluid samples to analyze the aqueous and gaseous chemical … Continued
Andrea Unzueta Martínez is a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Peter Girgui’s lab at Harvard University. She received her B.Sc. in Marine Biology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2016 and her Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology from Northeastern University in 2021. Andrea’s research uses molecular biology (e.g. metagenomics, transcriptomics) as well … Continued
