Short Bio
My interest marine and fisheries science stemmed from my love for freshwater fishing in local rivers and lakes in Taylor ham country, aka – Northwestern New Jersey, and deep-sea fishing off the coast of Florida. I have come and gone from Rutgers through the ebbs and flows of my academic and professional journey. I am on a quest to collect all the infinity stones at Rutgers: B.S. Marine Science & minor in Fisheries Science – 2019; M.S. Operational Oceanography – 2020; Research Staff – 2022 – present; PhD – starting in the fall of 2024. My undergraduate research focused on the arrival of American shad and river herring at the Island Farm Weir in relation to physical water properties such as temperature and river discharge. During my masters, I developed an automated analysis of fish migration using computer vision algorithms. While finishing up my masters, I was hired as a federal contractor in June of 2020 to support the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) as an Oceanographic Data Specialist and eventually transitioned to be a Physical Oceanographer where I used my expertise to generate the historical high tide flooding statistics and the annual high tide flooding outlook to disseminate the predicted frequency of high tide flooding to the public. After a few years, I returned to Rutgers as Research Staff to perform data analysis on glider and model data in addition to assisting students with their coding needs. My hobbies are fishing, kayaking, hiking, wood burning, and grilling.