Graduate students
Current (see this list of all students completing theses to date)

Ellie Slick
During my BS at Oregon State University in Fisheries and Wildlife Science and minor in Marine Conservation and Management, I dabbled in tropical ecology and large mammal conservation in Malaysian Borneo. I ultimately found a passion for estuarine and restoration science while interning at NOAA Fisheries and working in a seagrass ecology lab at OSU. For my thesis, I am working to understand how reef designs for living shorelines affect crab use and trophic interactions with native oysters.

Whitney Thornton
I have a BS in biology from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. After jobs monitoring giant garter snakes, endangered honeycreepers, and Sonoran desert vegetation, I worked for the USGS and the Invasive Spartina Project on restoration in San Francisco Bay. I am interested in tidal marsh restoration and rare plant propagation. My thesis explores donor source and site constraints in restoration of native Spartina foliosa (Pacific cordgrass) following removal of invasive Spartina hybrids.

Carl Hendrickson
After receiving my BA in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley, I sampled plankton along the west coast for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and also worked for the CA Academy of Sciences. I am interested in restoration and nature-based adaptation to climate change. For my thesis, I am investigating how oyster reefs in living shorelines projects influence spatial patterns of wave attenuation and sediment properties, which in turn may affect eelgrass growth.

Laura Hollander
Following my BS in wildlife and minor in ecology from the University of Georgia, I worked as a research technician in the San Francisco Bay area investigating vulnerability of salt marshes to sea level rise and avian influenza dynamics in waterfowl and shorebirds. These projects piqued my interest in processes that influence coastal vulnerability to climate change. For my thesis, I am exploring the effects of thin layer sediment placement on tidal marsh plants to assess this method for marsh adaptation to sea level rise.