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 I received my Bachelor’s degree in 2003 in environmental chemistry and geology from Hampshire College, a small liberal arts college in western Massachusetts. The progressive learning environment at Hampshire sparked my interest in earth and environmental science by allowing me to build my own curriculum, get hands-on experience in the lab, and travel with my professors to conduct field work around the world. After college, I returned to my home state of New Jersey to work as a technician in the marine geochemistry lab at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. I began working on trace elements in corals with Rob Sherrell before I was a student, but soon decided to continue working on the project as a Ph.D. thesis.
For my dissertation, I am using coral geochemistry to reconstruct seawater conditions and interpret climate changes in the past. Similar to tree rings; the skeleton of shallow water corals contain annually-resolved density bands. As corals grow older, they incorporate trace elements into their skeleton in proportion to the elemental composition of the seawater around them. I have focused my dissertation on the development and application of a novel proxy in corals (P/Ca ratios) to reconstruct seasonal to centennial scale changes in the concentration of seawater phosphate (an essential nutrient for primary productivity in the oceans). This new proxy can be used to reconstruct changes in large-scale biogeochemical cycles as well as local histories of anthropogenic nutrient loading on coral reefs.
As a student at IMCS, I have had a number of exciting research opportunities. I have been SCUBA diving in the Florida Keys collecting corals, lived on a ship for six weeks in the Antarctic, and cored sediments in the Norwegian Sea. When I’m not studying, I spend my time running, SCUBA diving, traveling, and hiking, and walking my dog, Emma.
Visit my homepage to learn more: http://www.imcs.rutgers.edu/~lavigne/ 
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