- Royce Fellowship
Concentration
Award Year
Faculty Sponsor: Warren Prell
Kathey gathered sediment cores from Narragansett Bay to analyze heavy metal distribution and concentration throughout this important estuary. Some of these metals are useful for dating various sections of cores, which is essential for reconstructing the depositional history of the bay. She focused on recent silver deposition potentially associated with runoff and accumulation of nano-particle technology materials.
Kathey is a marine biology Ph.D. student at Boston University. Her work focuses on understanding colony-level resilience in the endangered Acropora cervicornis (staghorn coral). She studies the variation in physical and transcriptomic responses to heat stress (which can lead to bleaching) and wound healing between fore and backreef corals in Belize, and among genets of nursery-grown coral from Florida. Her work fits within the greater context of applications for active reef restoration projects in the face of global climate change.