About me

Hi, my name is Laura! I am a graduate student researcher from UC Santa Cruz working with Dr. Devon Pearse in the Molecular Ecology and Genetic Analysis (MEGA) team at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz and Dr. Grant Pogson in UCSC’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department.

I am interested in early and juvenile development of fishes and how different influences like parental genetics and environmental factors impact development timing and characterization. My background experiences as an undergraduate at Northeastern University in husbandry and fish development have led me to wonder about how temperature impacts development timing and genetic effects specifically.

Research aside, my other passion is outreach. Through Flipgrid, classroom technology for increasing student engagement, I have connected with classrooms during my field season in Antarctica and while studying in Panama. I have also worked with other classrooms in private. If you would like to work with me through Flipgrid in your classroom, please contact me!

In my free time, I love to garden, cook, SCUBA dive, draw and do landscape photography. I also love to travel and explore new places.