People

Trainees - Cohort 2

Thomas Anderson

  • PhD Student, Agriculture and Resource Economics
TJ comes to Sustainable Oceans from the master’s program in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. His interests include aquaculture, marine fisheries management, and formulating policy solutions to problems in resource management.

Madison Armstrong

  • PhD Student, Graduate Group in Population Biology
Maddie obtained her B.S. in Biology with Specialization in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology from Washington State University in 2019. During her undergraduate career, she conducted research with Dr. Mark Dybdahl on how phenotypic plasticity in shell shape of the New Zealand freshwater snail may be impacting the invasion success of this species. For her PhD, Maddie is interested in how human-induced environmental change alters the adaptive mechanisms of sensitive marine species in those habitats.

Brooke Benson

  • PhD Student, Graduate Group in Population Biology
Brooke received her B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Since then, she has been a Lab Manager at Boston University. Brooke is interested in how climate change restructures natural systems and how the world’s oceans and their inhabitants are responding to anthropogenic disturbance on a range of geographic and temporal scales.

Jack Buckner

  • PhD Student, Graduate Group in Ecology
Jack received his B.A. in Mathematics and Chemistry from Carleton College in 2018. He aims to use mathematical and computational tools to develop adaptive ecosystem-based management strategies for fisheries and other natural resources. He is particularly interested in understanding how to foster resilience in social-environmental systems.

Esther Kennedy

  • PhD Student, Geology
Esther received her B.A. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University in 2013. For the past four years, Esther has been working as an Environmental Scientist for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. She is interested in the impacts of ocean acidification and climate change on coastal communities.

Marlynn Rollins

  • PhD Student, Graduate Group in Ecology
Marlynn graduated from Howard University in 2019 with a B.S. in Biology. As an undergraduate she participated in the Evolution and Ecology Graduate Admissions Pathways Program at UC Davis. She is interested in studying the effects of environmental stressors on marine ecosystems.

Ryan Swanson

  • PhD Student, Graduate Group in Ecology
Ryan earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Zoology and his Master’s in Marine Affairs (M.M.A.) from the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA) at the University of Washington. He seeks to combines marine ecological knowledge, modeling, and stakeholder input from coastal communities, to create policies that improve the sustainable management of marine natural resources.