My research program has two main currents. One addresses climate change and disturbance effects on primary producers, focusing on scope for resilience. Working at the interface of the biotic and abiotic, this research addresses how biogeochemical effects on algae and aquatic plants can emerge in ecosystem level patterns. The other employs the complex life cycles, common in algae, to test hypotheses about relative adaptive advantages and ecological consequences of reproductive patterns. I also explore the transfer of biological knowledge to applications through biologically inspired design collaborations.

      Marine algae are my experimental systems. They display great variation in physiology, morphology and life history within a single species (I.e., a single genetic background), they are critically important in coastal ecosystems and are recognized indicators of ecosystem health. By training, I am a physiological ecologist; my experience includes molecular biology, population ecology, population genetics and modeling.