Current Lab Members (listed in order of duration in the lab group)
Emily Bernhardt, PI
Emily received her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University in 2001 and has been a member of the Duke faculty since 2004. The core of Emily's interests are in watershed biogeochemistry, with most of her current effort invested in understanding how the ways in which people live on and use the landscape alters the structure, function and chemistry of receiving streams and wetlands. Emily teaches courses in General Ecology, Field Ecology and Biogeochemistry. |
Brooke Hassett, River Center Lab Manager
Brooke has been taking care of our analytical lab and running field campaigns for Duke river folks since 2005. Currently Brooke is the lab manager for the entire Duke River Center.
Before beginning work at Duke, Brooke completed a MS degree at the University of Maryland where she studied the impacts of river restoration in the Chesapeake Bay with Margaret Palmer. |
Jenny Rocca, Postdoctoral Associate |
Phil Savoy, Postdoctoral Scientist |
Jenny earned her PhD in 2015 from Colorado State University where she worked with Matt Wallenstein. She is now hanging out at Duke forcing microbial communities to have show downs in order to understand who wins when chemical regimes collide.
Jenny's website |
Phil Savoy earned his PhD in 2016 from SUNY Buffalo where he worked with Scott Mackay. Phil is bringing his expertise in modeling terrestrial ecosystem phenology into our new efforts to develop dynamic, mechanistic models of aquatic ecosystem metabolism. Ask him about the HaboobNados that regularly strike rivers.
[Phil's website] |
Alice Carter, PhD student |
Jackie Gerson, PhD student |
Alice joined the lab in August 2016. Alice comes to Duke from two years of work as a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. She has been focused on deep ocean trace element cycling, but will now be turning her attention to studying the metabolism of rivers as part of our StreamPULSE project. Alice is co-advised by Jim Heffernan.
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Jackie joined the lab in August 2016 after completing a Master's in Environmental Engineering on mercury dynamics and nutrient cycling in the Adirondacks. Here at Duke, Jackie is interested in the biogeochemistry of trace elements from human-impacted landscapes. She studies mercury and selenium interactions from mountaintop mining of coal in West Virginia, and mercury fate and transport from artisanal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon.
Jackie's website. |
Emily Ury, PhD student |
Audrey Thellman, PhD student |
Emily joined the lab in August 2016. She received her Masters at the Yale School of Forestry where she worked with Peter Raymond to study the use of oxygen isotopes of phosphate to trace fertilizer runoff in heavily farmed watersheds. She is curious about nutrient cycling and the impacts of various land uses on ecological communities and biogeochemical processes. Emily will begin her doctoral research in conjunction with our Coastal SEES project. Emily is co-advised with Justin Wright.
Emily's website. |
Audrey joined the lab in 2018. She did her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame where she worked with Jennifer Tank studying the role of groundwater and the hyporheic zone in agricultural stream nutrient cycling. At Duke, she is excited to dive in to the Hubbard Brook dataset to piece together the different biogeochemical stories of the historic field site.
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Wyatt Jernigan, Wündergrad Researcher
Wyatt joined the lab as a high school student in the summer of 2016. He is now a Junior at Duke, majoring in Biology with an Ecology concentration, and minoring in Earth and Ocean Sciences. He is curious about the pathways in and out, and cycles of nutrients, within streams. He is especially interested in how these cycles are affected by human driven land use change. Wyatt plans on completing a senior thesis and pursuing a post-graduate degree in Ecology.
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Karen Jin, Wuündergrad Researcher |
Melissa Marchese, Wündergrad Researcher
Melissa joined the lab in January 2018. She is in her third year at Duke, studying Environmental Science & Policy and Global Health with a certificate in Latin American & Caribbean Studies. She is interested in the mercury cycle and human exposure. For her senior thesis, she is studying its accumulation in livestock in artisanal gold mining communities in the Peruvian Amazon.
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Tyler Edwards, Wündergrad Researcher |
Alexander Miele, Research Associate/Lab Manager
Alexander joined the lab in January 2019. He is responsible for the collection and maintenance of data quality for the Streampulse project. He graduated from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in December 2016 where he worked with Todd Pierson looking at the evolutionary biology of two-lined salamanders. He is interested in hellbender conservation, waterfall geology and ecology, the evolution of flight in bats, and cetacean movement ecology.
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Jasmine Parham, PhD student
Jasmine joined the lab in August 2019. She received her undergraduate degree from Stetson University, and her M.S. from William & Mary where she studied the dietary transfer of methylmercury between aquatic and terrestrial food webs. At Duke, she studies the impact of mercury exposure on tropical birds from artisanal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon.
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Jonny Behrens, PhD student
Jonny’s website.
VISITING SCHOLARS
Amanda del Vecchia, Postdoctoral Scholar |
Austin Gray, PhD student
Austin is visiting from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Austin comes from Dr. Anne E. Hershey’s Aquatic Ecology Lab. Austin received his undergraduate degree from The Citadel, Military College of South Carolina. Austin also received his master’s degree from The Citadel Graduate College, investigating microplastic pollution. Austin is currently studying antibiotic pollution in streams of North Carolina. While in the Bernhardt Lab Austin is investigating how antibiotics can affect sediment biogeochemical processes.
Austin's website Twitter account @austin_doug13 |
You could be next!
LAB ALUMNIFormer PhD Students
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Jess Brandt sampling fish in NC lakes
Richard Marinos gets his soil loving feet wet in Hubbard Brook
Joanna Blaszczak proves that sensing streams is cool
Christina Bergeman collecting water samples in a cypress swamp on the NC coastal plain.
Matt Ross collecting storm samples in a WV stream
Ethan Baruch and a cricket frog from one of our urban streams
Joanna Blaszczak, Megan Fork, Emily Bernhardt, Kris Voss, Kayleigh Somers and Ashley Helton at the 2014 Urban Streams Meeting (after our Lorax play @ southeastern cities and streams)
Tim Covino installing sensors in New Hope Creek
Alison and Emily celebrate at the 2012 PhD hooding ceremony.
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