Graduate Students
José Miguel Andrade López
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2015
Email: andradej@stanford.edu
LinkedinLowe Lab
Paul Bump
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Summer 2016
Paul Bump is an explorer of the small and squishy. His research in strange, enigmatic, marine invertebrates hopes to unlock secrets around basic biological processes and provide novel perspectives to advance fundamental cell biology research. He currently studies how an organism can build two wildly different bodies during its life while having access to the same genetic information. While puzzling, the process of indirect development, with distinct larval and adult body plans, is the most common developmental strategy in many animals. His research involves studying the metamorphosis of (...)
Email: paulbump@stanford.edu
Paul's Website
Benjamin Burford
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2015
I earned my B.S. in field and wildlife biology from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2013. After graduation, I worked for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the respective fields of deep sea and anadromous fish ecology. In fall 2015, I enrolled in the Biology PhD program at Stanford University where my research utilizes in situ footage, scientific surveys, animal-borne data loggers, oceanographic data and molecular techniques to understand the migratory behaviors of ecologically and economically important Pacific squids and the environmental (...)
Email: bburford@stanford.edu
Hiding in plain sight: Mimicry in a juvenile deep-sea squid
Rachel Ragnhild Carlson
Ph.D. Student in Environment and Resources
Rachel Carlson researches the spatial ecology of coral reefs and variables impacting coral response to anthropogenic stress. Her work aims to support evidence-based marine planning linking conservation and sustainable livelihoods under climate change. She applies geospatial technology like high-resolution remote sensing as well as field-based methods to understand patterns of reef resilience and implications for ocean governance.Prior to joining Stanford, Rachel worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she led mapping and outreach programs to protect drinking water and (...)
Email: rrcarl@stanford.edu
Rachel Crane
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2015
Rachel is interested in molluscan shell form. Animals’ shells defend them from a variety of environmental dangers and predatory attacks, including a multitude of low-magnitude, repeated stresses, which could cumulatively cause lethal fatigue damage. She studies how shell features—from composition and microstructure to overall morphology—contribute to fatigue resistance. By developing new mechanical techniques to test shell fatigue resistance, she hopes to answer questions about the evolution of shell shape and the ecological interactions between hard-shelled molluscs, their predators, and the (...)
Email: rlcrane@stanford.edu
Rachel's Website
William Taylor Gough
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2017
Student Employee, Hopkins Marine Station
The margin between life and death is defined by an animal’s ability to navigate its environment and find food. For his PhD thesis work, Will Gough has been using biologging tags to study how locomotion and feeding kinematics scale with body size up to and including whales - the largest animals that have ever lived. Insights from this work will help us understand how these species move within and reacts to their local environment and give us a more complete picture of their physiology and energetic demands. As we move forward into the Anthropocene, these answers could help us develop more (...)
Email: wgough@stanford.edu
Richard Grewelle
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2016
Richard Grewelle is a current PhD student motivated to understand ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of wildlife disease systems. Prior research areas involve bioinformatics, phylogenetics, and disease ecology. Although with previous experience in terrestrial diseases, including Y. pestis (plague), Richard pursues marine disease ecology due to the lack of knowledge surrounding systems we hardly encounter. Marine diseases present significant challenges to not only biologists; they may devastate fragile ecosystems supporting fisheries or providing ecological services. Richard works (...)
Email: regrew@stanford.edu
Elora H. López-Nandam
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2015
Elora López-Nandam is a Ph.D. candidate in Biology at Stanford University. She uses genomics to address questions about the ecology, evolution, and conservation of marine life. Her research spans a wide range of topics, including coral bleaching recovery in American Samoa, somatic mutations in very long-lived organisms, and the effects of nuclear radiation on wildlife at Bikini Atoll, a former nuclear testing site in the Marshall Islands. López-Nandam's first research expedition to Bikini Atoll was featured on the PBS documentary series Big Pacific in June 2017. Her research projects have (...)
Email: elora@stanford.edu
Personal Site
Nicole E. Moyen
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2017
Email: nmoyen@stanford.edu
LinkedInGoogle Scholar Profile
Nia Symone Walker
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2017
I am a 4th year PhD Candidate at Stanford University under the mentorship of Dr. Stephen Palumbi, based at Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, CA.
Email: niasw@stanford.edu
