This fall, COASST welcomed a new graduate student to our team; Bibi Powers-
McCormack!
Bibi hails from the Pacific Northwest, and has traversed a variety of ecosystems before making his way to us. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in Organismal Biology and Ecology, with a minor in Human Biology and Kinesiology. Following that accomplishment, he made his way to the midwest and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), where he used a 20-year dataset to investigate how our changing climate affects where and when seagrass grows. Later, he worked with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and looked into how wildfires and drought affect downstream river ecosystems.
Studying the effects of change has been a constant thread through Bibi’s journey, and now he is embarking on the personally major change of going back to school! As a graduate student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, Bibi will be co-advised by Dr. Andrew Berdahl and our own COASST Executive Director, Dr. Julia Parrish. He will use computer models and COASST data to explore how the movement of individual animals informs the movements of populations, and what the underlying reasons for those movements can tell us about the health of the ecosystem.
When Bibi isn’t deep-diving into the scientific literature, or writing a new bit of code, he can be found riding his bike, traveling to do cool things in cool places (like protecting native birds in New Zealand, or SCUBA diving in Fiji), or hanging out with his adorable border collie mix, Echo. Pictured to the right.
We’re so excited to have Bibi join the team, please give him a warm COASST welcome!