Melissa is a Ph.D. Candidate at Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University and an AAUS-certified scientific diver. She is interested in studying the impacts of climate change stressors such as ocean acidification, warming, and hypoxia on physiology and species interactions in nearshore communities, and how these organismal-level effects scale up to alter ecosystem functioning. This scholarship will support Melissa’s research exploring the impacts of ocean acidification on grazing relationships and seagrass disease at an underwater CO2 vent in Ischia, Italy.

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