I am a starting PhD student interested in biogeography and general ecology of deep-sea environments. I received a B.S. in Marine Sciences from the University of Connecticut and a M.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Maine where my thesis focused on describing biological diversity among deep-sea benthic communities in the Southern Ocean. My research in the Cordes Lab focuses on the biogeographic and ecological relationships between cold-water coral communities on seamounts in the northeastern Caribbean Sea. I seek to provide an understanding of how these seamounts fit into a larger regional biogeography of the Western Atlantic Ocean.