Marine Biology (Ph.D.) Spotlight

Jess examines the anthropogenic impacts on seals in the Gulf of Maine, using survey data and acoustic recordings to better understand these impacts.

Miguel de Jesus Gomez Garcia believes that modern quantitative methods can significantly enhance our comprehension of ecosystems and help address complex conservation and management questions that have proved challenging thus far.

Mikayla Cote examines the influence of marine microzooplankton grazing on the production/consumption of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) and marine aggregates in general.

Grant Milne explores the use of passive acoustic monitoring and metabarcoding of seawater samples as methods of measuring soundscape properties and detecting marine taxa to identify indicators of the underwater acoustic environment in temperate coastal habitats.

Kyrie Newby is studying the effect of different environmental stressors, including ocean acidification, ocean warming, the presence of invasive species, and more on the blue mussel Mytilus edulis.

Andrew (Drew) Villeneuve (he/him/his) is a global change marine ecologist interested in working with data across scales of ecological organization to better understand the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems and the people that depend on them.

Researcher Matt Tyler interested in the long-term effects non-native algae and sessile animals will have on intertidal and subtidal communities in the Gulf of Maine, and what role they will play in facilitating or resisting future invasions.

Brandon O'Brien is investigating how the composition of seaweed communities in the Gulf of Maine has changed over time.

Researcher Aliya Caldwell GOM-breeding Common Terns and the forage fishes they rely on, which include species of herring, hake, and sand lance among others.

Taja Sims-Harper is a doctoral student in the marine biology Ph.D. program. She conducts research on microplastics in oysters and other marine life in Great Bay in the lab of Bonnie Brown, professor of ecological genetics and the chair of the department of biological sciences.

Grant Milne graduated from Thiel College in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in conservation biology and a Bachelor of Arts in biology before joining COLSA's biological sciences: marine biology Ph.D. program. The Portville, New York native, who once had a gray seal chew on his fin while he was SCUBA…

Kelsey Meyer is a doctoral student in COLSA’s biological sciences: marine biology Ph.D. program. She currently spends a lot of time traversing Great Bay in a small boat, collecting invasive green crabs, baiting traps and monitoring tiles for oyster spat.