Sophie is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama based at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. She began her love of coral reefs as a young child snorkeling with her father and has continued that love as a diver. Sophie develops new instrumentation to make trait-based coral restoration practices more effective and accessible. Her current research is developing a tool to understand how fluorescent proteins in corals influence bleaching susceptibility and photoprotection. She has recently become an AAUS Scientific Diver and plans to use this award to test her tool on corals in Fiji and Guam.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍