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. |
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. Alice is interested in the energetics of rivers, and is part of our StreamPULSE project. Much of Alice's work has focused on the limitations to our current ability to measure and model metabolic activity that doesn't involve oxygen, the challenge of studying rivers that don't flow, and the prevalence of low and no oxygen conditions in river ecosystems. 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 dissertation work has been supported by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and she is the first ecologist to be named a Duke Global Health Doctoral Scholar.
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. Emily's dissertation research examines the effect of sea level rise and saltwater intrusion on coastal ecosystems at scales ranging from soil cores to ecoregions. She is a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology Fellow (2017-2020). Emily's website.
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Audrey joined the lab in 2018. She did her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame where she worked with Jennifer Tank. For her disseration Audrey is working at Hubbard Brook and is particularly interested in how climate change is altering the hydrologic, energetic and biogeochemical regimes of rivers. She is a NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology Fellow (2020-2023).
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Mike Vlah, Data Scientist
Mike joined the lab in 2017 after completing his MS at the University in Washington. His background in aquatic ecosystem ecology and his facility with wrangling data into beautiful and useful formats is the secret weapon that underpins the work we do in our StreamPULSE and MacroSHEDS projects. Meet Mike through his code via
https://github.com/vlahm |
Jonny Behrens, PhD student
Jonny joined the lab in August 2019. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago where he worked with Albert Colman to study microbial activity and phosphate cycling in the open ocean. Prior to joining the lab, Jonny spent 3 years working in science policy research in Washington D.C.. For his dissertation, Jonny is interested in the biogeochemistry of urban ecosystems, including the transport and fate of contaminants. Jonny is co-advised with Martin Doyle. Jonny’s website.
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Jasmine Parham, PhD student |
Spencer Rhea, Data Scientist |
Jasmine joined the lab in August 2019. She received her undergraduate degree from Stetson University, and conducted postgraduate studies at William & Mary studying 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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Spencer joined the lab in 2020 after finishing his bachelor's degree at Colorado State University. Here at Duke, Spencer works closely with Mike Vlah in development and maintenance of our StreamPULSE and Macrosheds portals.
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Elliott White Jr., Postdoctoral Scholar
Elliott is co-advised by both Emily and Xi Yang (UVA). His current research uses remote sensing to track, quantify, and predict changes in coastal wetland landcover. He received his PhD in Environmental Engineering Sciences from the University of Florida in 2019. His dissertation research examined the effects of saltwater intrusion on coastal freshwater swamps using ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing.
Google Scholar :: ORCiD Twitter @SwampManElliott |
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 |
Amanda DelVecchia, Postdoc |
Steve Anderson, Lab Manager |
Amanda joined the lab as a visitor from Flathead Lake Biological Station in October 2019. She earned her PhD from the University of Montana in 2016 after working with Dr. Jack Stanford on the contribution of aged biogenic and geologic methane to aquifer food webs. Broadly, she studies how the hydrology and biogeochemistry of freshwaters and sediments affect greenhouse gas dynamics and ecosystem processes.
Amanda's website Twitter: @agdelv |
Steve came to Duke in 2011 and joined the lab in 2014. He earned his B.S. in Conservation Biology from SUNY-ESF and a M.S. in Forestry & Environmental Resources from NC State University working with Dr. Marcelo Ardón. Steve has a dual appointment with Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association's (Durham, NC) Water Management Program. In the last several years, his focus has been on the diverse responses of coastal wetland plant species to elevated seawater exposure. Steve has been a lead research technician and coordinator for our work on coastal ecosystem impacts of saltwater intrusion and the effects of nanomaterials in freshwater wetlands.
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Wündergrad Researchers
Wyatt Jernigan |
Melissa Marchese |
Tyler Edwards |
Abena Antobre |
Wyatt joined the lab as a high school student in the summer of 2016. He is now a rising Senior, majoring in Biology with an Ecology concentration, and minoring in Earth and Ocean Sciences. Wyatt 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. |
Melissa joined the lab in January 2018. She is a rising senior and a first year MS student in Duke's Global Health Masters program and is earning a certificate in Latin American & Caribbean Studies. Melissa is interested in the mercury cycle and human exposure. For her senior thesis, she is studying the accumulation of Hg in crops, fish and livestock in artisanal gold mining communities in the Peruvian Amazon. She is shown here collecting feather samples from a chicken in a Peruvian community along the Madre de Dios River. Read Melissa's reflections on what she has learned from two field seasons in Peru. |
Tyler Edwards joined the lab as a Huang Fellow summer researcher in 2019. She returned as a NSF REU fellow in summer 2020 and will be conducting her honors thesis research in the lab examining spatial and temporal variation in aquatic insect emergence from streams of the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire (listen to her explain this to her parents in this podcast). Tyler is a pursuing a major in biology and a certificate from Science and Society. She is an Alice M. Baldwin Scholar and Huang Fellow, and was the producer of Hoof ‘n’ Horn’s 2020 winter musical, The Wiz. |
Abena joined the lab in January/February of 2019. She is a senior co-majoring in biology and global health. She is also a David M. Rubenstein scholar. After completing Bass Connections in West Amansie District, Ghana on mercury exposure to gold miners, Abena developed a general interest in heavy metals. As of now she is pursuing an honors biology thesis on how heavy metals travel up trophic levels in riparian systems. This entails collecting spiders and algae in the local ponds around Duke and Durham.
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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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