B.S., University of California-Berkeley (1999)

M.S., Yale University (2006)

“The Jefferson Fellowship provided me with the freedom to choose my research interests and location. Most graduate students in my department are committed to working on specific research assignments depending on their advisor’s funding, or have teaching assignments. I was able to use my first few years to work in Costa Rica, Mexico and India and explore a number of research questions that I was interested in, before I settled on working in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.”

“My research is about the sources and importance of dust as a nutrient input to the forests of the southern Yucatan peninsula. I have been investigating how forest clearing affects the forest canopy’s ability to trap dust, and whether dust from the Saharan desert is an important source of nutrients to the forests of the Yucatan.”

Advisor: Deborah Lawrence