I am currently a PhD dissertator under the direction of Dr. Chin H Wu in Environmental Fluid Mechanics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research interests include the physical study of small lakes, regional and global physical limnology, and whole-lake ecosystem dynamics.
I began my graduate studies as part of a collaborative effort to artificially mix a small bog lake in northern Wisconsin, and I am currently working on the destratification of a larger lake. My interests in small lake limnology have since continued, and I am currently involved in research that follows stratification and mixing patterns in several of the North Temperate Lakes in the LTER network (NTL-LTER). As part of this long-term research, I am also studying drought effects on the energy and water budgets of two contrasting seepage lakes.
As an active participant in GLEON, I am interested in global-scale limnology from a physical sciences perspective. In collaboration with many other GLEON scientists, we have amassed a collection of instrumented buoy data from over 40 lakes that range in size from 5e-4 to 2e3 km2, and cover latitudes from -40 to 60°. My research includes multi-lake comparisons of the drivers of lake water temperatures, surface fluxes, and sensitivity to environmental change. Related to my dissertation topic, I am interested in how spatial and temporal response scales vary across lake sizes.
I am the current graduate student association chair for GLEON. GLEON is a community of limnologists collaborating in the pursuit of greater understanding of lake ecosystems on a global scale.
I am the graduate student representative for the North Temperate Lakes LTER site. The LTER network has been integral to all of my current research projects, providing high-quality measurements of atmospheric conditions, routine sampling of several of my study lakes, and allowing me to network with scientists outside my discipline.