About

Click Here for my Curriculum Vitae

I grew up in the swamps and springs of Florida’s Nature Coast, then moved up to NY where I earned a B.A. in English at Cornell University. I minored in Natural Resources and Law & Society, planning for a career in environmental law. While at Cornell, I became heavily involved in the undergraduate horticulture club, so much so that instead of heading to law school, I moved to Vermont and started a certified organic farm with another club member.

I continued to work in ornamental horticulture, mainly in Minnesota. Then, in 2018, news of Southwest Florida’s historic algae blooms inspired me to return to school to pursue research that might alleviate the issue. I was accepted into Dr. Bill Mitsch’s lab at Florida Gulf Coast University, the Everglades Wetland Research Park. My research involved “Wetlaculture,” a technique which uses wetlands to recycle nutrient runoff to crops.

I earned my M.S. in the spring of 2021, and published my research shortly thereafter. That summer, I began a PhD with Dr. Marinus Otte at North Dakota State University in the Wet Ecosystem Research Group, where I modeled the area of constructed wetlands needed to remediate impaired watersheds and developed strategies to facilitate real-world implementation of my modeling scenarios.

Chief among those strategies was the development of cattail-based bioproducts to encourage the recycling of aquatic nutrient pollution. I am currently continuing that work as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of South Florida thanks to a generous grant from the Florida DEP.