Ponchanok is a Ph.D. student at Old Dominion University. She was born in Phuket, a small island in southern Thailand, where her passion for the ocean began. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Prince of Songkhla University, Thailand, and a Master’s degree from Ghent University as part of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program. Her research in the Barshis Lab at ODU focuses on the variation in coral thermal resilience across and within species, as she aims to understand the mechanisms underlying these responses.

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