Kaitlin McDonald, Ph.D. expected 2024, is asking questions about the community ecology of disease, focusing on ticks and Lyme disease, and how science is communicated in social media. She leads up our Facebook misinformation team and conducts field work and laboratory experiments with ticks.

Quin Shingai, Ph.D. expected 2026, is working as a research assistant as part of the EPSCoR project. Her M.S. research with Grace Wilkinson at Iowa State included work on the cycling of microcystins in freshwater lakes and experiments to test how phytoplankton respond to nutrient enrichment.

Haley Warzecha ’22 is working with Kaitlin on the tick and science communications projects. She has been a Sophomore Scholar, Presidential Scholar, and paid research intern.

Talia Pikounis ’22 was a WISP intern with Andy during Winter – Spring 2019, spent time with Vivien Taylor on some methylmercury work, has worked with collaborator Vivien Taylor on studies of arsenic and mercury in shellfish, and has been working to update our 2016 analysis on early-life exposure to arsenic and other metals.

Ian McGrory ’22 started work on the NASA project as a Presidential Scholar in Summer 2020, and continued this research full-time during Winter 2021.

Casimiro Cosme ’22 is working on the Facebook science communication project.

Jake Zikan ’23 is a Presidential Scholar applying tools from machine learning to datasets from the EPSCoR project and prior work on plankton in Bangladeshi ponds.

Katya Golubovsky ’23 is a Junior Scholar working on a project led by Jess Trout-Haney on the use of cyanobacteria-specific pigments to assess cyanobacteria populations in lakes.

Helen Laird ’23 worked as a Sophomore Scholar with Kaitlin McDonald on ticks during Summer 2021, has done some moonlighting on our lake projects, and will help create an occupancy model for small mammals during Fall 2021.

Ivan Tochimani-Hernandez ’24 is has been quietly processing Keith Fritschie’s videos of spawning brook trout for most of the past year.