Danya Awshah is a second-year Ph.D. Student in Biological Oceanography at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is from Tampa, Florida, where she completed degrees in Environmental Science and Policy and Chemistry at the University of South Florida. At Scripps, she is a member of the Décima Lab, a zooplankton ecology lab that investigates a wide range of topics from food-web dynamics and biogeochemistry, to warming and acidification impacts on plankton, and even wildfire effects on the marine pelagic ecosystem.
Danya’s work so far in the Décima Lab has focused on zooplankton trophic ecology and stoichiometry in the California Current Ecosystem (CCE). She utilizes stable isotope analysis of carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 and total particulate phosphorus analysis to understand zooplankton food web dynamics and stoichiometric trends in the CCE over space and time. She is specifically interested in the effects of various environmental variables, such as temperature and nutrient fluxes, and how their variability under a changing climate will impact the stoichiometry of the zooplankton, their phytoplankton prey, and the overall community composition in the CCE.
Outside of her work, Danya also serves as a coordinator for Scripps Community Outreach for Public Education (SCOPE), helping to connect the greater San Diego community to the science conducted at Scripps. Additionally, in her free time, Danya enjoys reading, crocheting, baking, and running to unwind from a long day at work in the lab!
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