Research
Our research focuses on understanding the processes that shape marine communities, and what conditions and interactions support or erode their diversity and resilience to climate variability.
We currently conduct research in Palau, Mexico, Italy, Kiribati, and California.
Fiorenza Micheli
Fiorenza Micheli is Co-Director of Stanford’s Center for Ocean Solutions, Chair of the Oceans Department at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and a marine ecologist at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, where she is the David and Lucile Packard Professor of Marine Science. Her research focuses on the processes shaping marine communities and coastal social-ecological systems, and incorporating this understanding in marine management and conservation. She investigates climatic impacts on marine ecosystems, particularly the impacts of hypoxia and ocean acidification on marine species, communities and fisheries, marine predators’ ecology and trophic cascades, the dynamics and sustainability of small-scale fisheries, and the design and function of Marine Protected Areas. Her current research takes her to Mexico, Italy, Palau, the Line Islands, and Chagos, in addition to California. She is a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, research advisor to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Seafood Watch and the Benioff Ocean Initiative, and senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Natalie Arnoldi
I am interested in the role of mobile marine predators like sharks and tunas in creating connections between nearshore and open ocean food webs, the ecological significance of these interactions and their implication for sustainable management of marine resources. My current research is in Palau, a small-island/big ocean nation in the Central Pacific, who recently designated 80% of their ocean territory as a no-take marine reserve. The outcomes of our connectivity research will inform critical decision making for Palau’s changing fishing sectors and practices and establish crucial baseline knowledge for the long term monitoring and management of the new sanctuary.
Veronica Pagowski
Veronica is a PhD student broadly interested in larval biology as various scales, from molecules to ecosystems. In the first part of her PhD, she worked on describing larval nervous systems and investigating how these simple nervous systems coordinate sophisticated larval behaviors. In the Micheli lab, she is excited to tackle questions relating to larval ecology, investigating larval behavior in the context of different environmental conditions and as they relate to population connectivity. Broadly, she is interested in understanding how marine larvae navigate the open ocean and what impacts their movement has on local and global ecosystems.
Ryan Rogers
My general research interests lie at the intersection of community-level trophic ecology, disturbance ecology, and conservation. I have specific interests in understanding the relative importance of biodiversity and biotic interactions in shaping ecosystem dynamics under various stressors (climate impacts, species introductions, disease outbreaks). I have primarily used vulnerable nearshore ecosystems (reefs, marshes, and seagrasses) to examine these questions, with the goal of supporting scientific understanding and conservation strategies.
Carolina Olguín Jacobson
I am interested in the relationship between kelp forest ecosystems and sustainable fishery cooperatives. For this postdoc, I will focus on socio-ecological systems within fishery cooperatives in Baja California, Mexico, investigating their response and adaptation to environmental changes such as climate change, as well as social and global changes such as the COVID-19 pandemic through oceanographic and ecological monitoring.
Mica Chapuis
I am currently working on Jamie McDevitt-Irwin’s project in the Chagos Archipelago analyzing pictures and videos and helping with intertidal fieldwork in Big Sur, CA. I am also leading a project analyzing mussel cover in Monterey Bay.