August 2025: I am very excited to announce that I will be a SciComm in the Park Fellow! In collaboration with The Ecological Society of America (ESA) and The National Parks Service (NPS), I will be creating two communication pieces about Estimating White-tailed Deer Numbers to support Deer Management
and Forest Resiliency in Northeast Region NPS Units! Stay tuned.
July 2025: I met up with old friends on a week-long trip to the Santa Fe Institute after we received a grant for a micro working group investigating the drivers of stability in North American Bird communities!
August 2025: Spent a week backpacking in the Eastern Sierras for fieldwork led by Briggs lab member Cannon. We spent time checking in on Mountain Yellow-Legged frogs in the alpine ponds!
June 2025: Undergrad, Pratyush Rallapally, and I received the Worster Summer Research Fellowship! The Worster Award Fellowships supports the development of graduate and undergraduate research in ecology, evolution and/or marine biology through a mentoring program that pairs an undergraduate student with a graduate student mentor to conduct summer research.
Pratyush and I will be working on investigating the impact of drought on the amphibian parasite-parasites networks in California ponds!
May 2025: I received the Dixon-Levy Service Award for my contributions to my graduate community. I received this award for my work in my department’s DEI committee and Graduate Student Advisory Committee
February 2025: Fellow EEMB Grad students Julianna, Ruby, Erin, Piper, and I planned UCSB ‘s graduate research symposium. We added a career panel featuring UCSB alumni who are back to talk about their paths after graduating! We also welcomed new faces to the department at this event, which doubled as EEMB’s recruitment weekend!
October 2024: I traveled to Sète, France, to participate in the Santa Fe Institute’s Complexity-GAINS school, where students from around the world gathered to learn from leading experts how to approach the investigation of complex ecological problems. The focus was on quantifying ecosystem resilience. I met amazing people, and the program transformed the way I approach and think about natural systems.
May 2024: I placed second and received the People’s Choice award in the UC-wide Grad Slam. Read about my experience in this coverage published by The Current!
April 2024: I competed in and won the UCSB Grad Slam, a 3-minute public speaking competition with my talk “Healthy Forest, Healthy Humans.
