2023-24 New Faculty

Kara is the Assistant Professor of Marine Ecology and is joining the Williams-Mystic faculty as a visiting professor for Spring 2024. Kara got her bachelor’s degree in biology from the College of William & Mary and received her PhD in Marine Sciences in 2022 from the University of South Alabama at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, where she studied how stressful low oxygen conditions affect the interplay of ecology and biogeochemistry in shallow coastal sediments. After her PhD Kara moved to Stony Brook University on Long Island for a postdoctoral fellowship where she has been exploring ways to image and quantify the complex structures created by sediment-dwelling organisms. Kara also co-instructs the Investigative Marine Biology Laboratory course at Shoals Marine Lab and has a blast introducing students to marine biology and the scientific process.

Doing ecology is a unique challenge in sediments because the organisms inhabit an opaque environment, so in her research Kara uses creative methods and experimental tools to “see through mud”. Her research has involved constructing a field deployable benthic chamber system to measure sediment oxygen fluxes, using geochemical imaging tools to make “heat maps” of sediment chemical concentrations, and collaborating with radiologists at Stony Brook Hospital to put buckets of mud in their fancy CT machines and create three-dimensional models of seagrass roots and animal burrows. During her free time Kara enjoys swimming, scuba diving, reading, sewing and cycling. She just got a folding bike and is very excited about it.