About Me
I'm a first year PhD student studying Marine Atmospheric and Sustainability Sciences at Stony Brook University. When I first began my Bachelors, I was a Computer Science major. I took various courses from computer architecture to database system design & management. While I love programming, I disliked the idea of software engineering. I wanted to do more with my skills and apply them in more unconventional ways. I switched into my university's Biology program, graduating with a degree in Biology and a concentration in Ecology & Evolution in Spring of 2022.
During my senior year, I enrolled in Ecological Field Methods, where our small class went on trips every week to various sites within New Jersey and practiced various field work methods. I was nominated for the NAGT/USGS Cooperative Summer Fellowship Program, and selected as an intern for the summer of 2022. I was placed at the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center in Flagstaff, researching food webs within the Grand Canyon and bat foraging ecology in the San Juan River. Throughout my time there, I learned about processing benthic and drift samples, and collected specimens using light traps along the San Juan River. Additionally, I gathered population data using Wildlife Acoustics devices to record bat calls within the research sites. A portion of the internship involved data analysis using R, which I came to enjoy, leading me to pursue research that combines computational and qualitative methodologies with my love of biology. I'm interested in qualitative and computational biology, and enjoy the application of these methods to a variety of biomes. I particularly enjoy marine ecosystems as the ecological requirements of marine life is so vastly different than terrestial ecosystems. I would love to utilize quantiative methods and GIS to learn more about the migratory patterns of marine life and how they are impacted by anthropogenic disturbances.
I completed my Masters in Biology at New Jersey Institute of Technology, defending my thesis The Potential for Automated Insect Classification Using Infrared Remote Sensing" in May of 2024.
What I'm Doing Now
I began my PhD program at Stony Brook University in Fall of 2024, working on analyzing active acoustics of internal waves as well as zooplankton migration through EchoView. I am also working on identification of zooplankton in net tows using microscopy. You can find updates on my research as well as some personal projects here under the Current Research Projects tab!
You can contact me at rachel.deahl@stonybrook.edu or find me on social media below!