Christina is a first-year PhD student based out of the University of Oregon’s marine station, the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. 

Her research focuses on the biodiversity and systematics of an understudied group of marine worms, the nemerteans.

Christina graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Marine Biology from the OIMB, where she was first introduced to the wonder and diversity of marine invertebrates and her current research advisor. 

She worked on a number of research projects as an undergraduate, studying the diversity, reproduction, ecology, and functional morphology of different marine invertebrate groups and seaweeds.

Christina is tremendously grateful to receive the Raymund Fellowship this year, which will allow her to make good progress on processing the >600 nemerteans she and her advisor, Dr. Svetlana Maslakova, collected in Panama this past summer.

She is excited to continue developing taxonomic expertise, to describe species new to science, and to learn how to use biodiversity data in a comparative framework to answer specific questions about marine invertebrate evolution.