Ryan is a Ph.D. student in the Cordes Laboratory at Temple University. His primary research interests lie in understanding how benthic megafaunal communities are influenced by habitat structure and environmental constraints. After finishing his undergraduate work in Environmental Science & Biology at Arizona State University, Ryan completed an M.Sc. in Earth & Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. His Master’s research focused on the compositional and functional diversity of benthic communities in fjordic ecosystems and the community effects of spatiotemporally variable hypoxia. He will be applying these broad interests to the lab’s DEEPSEARCH project looking at submarine canyon and coral communities of the Mid-Southeastern US continental margin.