PhD Student

Miriam Goldstein

Undergraduate Degree:  B.S. Biology 

Undergraduate University: Brown University

Email: mgoldstein@ucsd.edu

Website: http://leichterlab.ucsd.edu

Website Personal: http://theoystersgarter.com 

Supervisor: Jim Leichter

Brief Bio:
After college, I worked for an environmental consulting company assessing natural resource damage on Superfund sites and other places known in the business as "icky".  In search of a little non-human damage,  I moved to the shoulder of Mt. Washington in NH (home of the highest recorded surface wind speed, 231 mph) and became a naturalist for Appalachian Mountain Club. I got blown all the way to New York City, where I sold skeletons, supplied live butterflies to artists, and managed the construction of an 11-story condo building.

I'm is thrilled to find her way back to the ocean. My undergraduate research on successional attachment converted: patterns in the Gulf of Maine found a correlation between the physical structure of invasive algae and increased blue mussel settlement. For my Ph.D. research, I'm interested in the mechanisms by which marine ecosystems degrade and recover, why particular species and assemblages tolerate poor conditions better than others, and how the hardest-hit systems can regain some level of biodiversity and ecosystem  function.

Recent Research
Miriam organized and led the highly publicized SEAPLEX project. The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition focused on a suite of critical scientific questions.  How much plastic is accumulating, how is it distributed and how is it affecting ocean life.

SEAPLEX VIDEOS

Photos from the expedition

Highly altered marine ecosystems, urban ecology, invertebrate zoology.