2024
Lee Jones
Lee, a Link Summer Fellowship recipient, came to our lab from the University of Maine Honors college. For her summer project, Lee examined behavioral interactions between whitespotted eagle rays and magnetic deterrents.
Lee is a junior at University of Maine and will be continuing honors thesis work on marine species ecology.
2023
Ashley Bobnar
Ashley, a Link summer Fellowship recipient, came to our lab from the Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University. For her summer project, Ashley studied field interactions between elasmobranchs and deterrent technology applied to shellfish aquaculture gear in the Indian River Lagoon.
Ashley is now a master’s student at the College of Charleston.
2022
Alayna Hicks
Alayna was a Link Fellowship recipient, and came to us from the University of Arizona. Her summer project examined interactions between various shell-crushing predators and mollusks using fragment analysis.
Alayna is currently a Sustainability Project Associate with the City of Orlando.
2021
Kayla McCulloch
Kayla was a Link Fellowship recipient, and came to us from the University of Miami. Her summer project examined interactions between whitespotted eagle rays and various types of antipredator gear used in clam aquaculture.
Kayla is pursuing her PhD at University of Souther Mississippi, working with Dr. Nicole Phillips.
2019
Brianna Cahill
Brianna was a Link Fellowship recipient, and came to us from Stony Brook University. Her intern project was Assessing Residency of Tagged Mesopredators around Clam Leases in the Indian River Lagoon.
Bri went on to become a MS student in the FEC lab and finished her thesis work in 2022. Bri currently works in the Peterson Lab at Stony Brook University.
Erin Mullen
Erin was a Link Fellowship recipient and came to the program through the United States Coast Guard Academy. Erin’s project was Comparing Detection Performance between Internal and External Acoustic Transmitters. Her project was under the guidance of Dr Matt Ajemian, and Dr Lauran Brewster.
Erin is continuing her education with the United States Coast Guard Academy.
Mason Thurman
Mason was a Link Fellowship recipient under the mentors Dr. Paul Wills, Dr. Matt Ajemian, and Steve Lombardo. Mason came to us from Florida Institute of Technology, and his project was Determining Juvenile Bonefish Benthic Habitat Preference Using Mesocosms.
Mason is a PhD student at Clemson University.
2018
Catherine Lamboy (Cowan)
Catherine’s project was Assessment of Mollusk Predation Through the Use of Bioacoustics. She graduated from Florida Institute of Technology in 2019 and was involved with a publication stemming from her summer internship project.
She currently lives in Hawaii.
2017
Alex Allen
Alex came to us from Florida Gulf Coast University (expected graduation May 2018).
Alex worked on all projects of the Fisheries Ecology and Conservation Lab, but was principally in charge of Red Drum husbandry and captive observations of external tag impacts on fish behavior.
Rachel Shaw
Rachel came to us as a visiting master's student (Interdisciplinary Studies) from the University of Central Florida.
Rachel worked on several items over the summer, including GIS-based delineation of nearshore habitat along the treasure coast, as well as developing aerial survey techniques with Indian River By Air. She then moved on to obtain a master’s degree with the FEC lab and graduated in 2020. Rachel is now a high school science teacher in central Florida.
2016
Sam Dowiarz
Samantha was a Link Fellowship recipient from the University of Miami in summer 2016.
As part of her summer project, Sam analyzed long-term fishery-independent data from the Gulf of Mexico Shark Pupping and Nursery (GULFSPAN) program.
Sam graduated with a master’s degree in Biology from East Carolina University, and is currently a research specialist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Sara Barrett (Menendez)
Sara Barrett worked with us in summer 2016 as a Fisheries Ecology intern. Sara studied at the University of Tampa, where she graduated in May 2017.
Sara moved on to a master’s program at University of Southern Mississippi, working under the supervision of Dr. Jake Schaefer. She graduated there in 2020, and is currently a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Manuela Sales
Manuela came to us from the prestigious "Science Without Borders" Program, hailing from the State University of Ceara (BR).
Manuela helped us with analyzing field mating footage of wild Spotted Eagle Rays.