As a research assistant with the New Hampshire Lakes Lay Monitoring Program, I work with our volunteers and undergraduate interns on the lovely lakes of New Hampshire to monitor water quality in the field and in the lab. In addition to providing program support for the LLMP, I am also a graduate student in the Integrative and Organismal Biology Master’s program at UNH. My research focuses on investigating the ecology and toxicity of deep-water cyanobacteria blooms occasionally found on clear New Hampshire Lakes.  I joined the LLMP team after four years monitoring water quality and aquatic plants on lakes in Connecticut with a small consulting company, and am glad to take a crack at identifying any aquatic plants that come my way! Other prior research experience includes training a little yellow submarine to monitor seagrass beds in Australia and looking for parasites in the gonads of snails on Palmyra Atoll while double majoring in Marine Biology and Earth Systems at Stanford University.