Zoë is working towards her Ph.D. in the Ecology and Evolution Department at Rutgers University. Growing up along the coast of Maine, USA, she has long been fascinated by the interactions between humans and the ocean. After graduating from Yale College in 2015, she spent two years SCUBA diving through kelp forests and working in fisheries curriculum development at the University of Alaska Southeast. Living and working in a region where the ocean is intertwined with the human experience inspired her to pursue a graduate degree in marine ecology. Now working with Dr. Malin Pinsky at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Zoë is exploring the dynamics at species range boundaries. Specifically, she is using the extensive NOAA bottom trawl database to examine instances of local colonization and extinction and linking these events to climate drivers. Additionally, she is interested in how species’ traits act as a filter for environmental variability, and how these traits vary along a species’ range. She is also a part of Rutgers’ Coastal Climate Risk and Resiliency Traineeship, which aims to bridge the gap between biologists, engineers, social scientists, and policy makers all interested in resiliency within coastal communities. Through the Traineeship, she has worked closely with communities in New Jersey recovering from Hurricane Sandy which made landfall in 2012. She hopes for her research to push the boundaries of science, but to also be accessible to communities experiencing change first hand.