Introducing the 2019 - 2020 STRIDE Fellows
We are very pleased to introduce the 2019 - 2020 cohort of STRIDE Fellows. Below, you will find brief bios for each fellowship recipient. If you are interested in applying for a STRIDE fellowship, applications will be available in Spring 2020. If you are interested in getting involved in the STRIDE program, please send an email to STRIDE@stonybrook.edu for more information.
MOLLY GRAFFAM
School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences
Lab: Nils Volkenborn
Molly is a PhD candidate in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Molly's research interest is improving water quality through nutrient removal processes. Her dissertation is on the biogeochemistry of groundwater and wastewater treatment systems including permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) and nitrogen removing biofilters (NRBs). She is interested in understanding the link between hydrology and redox conditions which impact microbial processes and are critical for nitrogen removal. She is also interested in the alternative metabolic pathways that can sometimes lead to pollution swapping during water treatment. Her research can help inform the design criteria for NRBs and PRBs so that nutrient removal performance is optimized. This work is intended to contribute toward meeting nitrogen load reduction targets set by policymakers.
Email: molly.graffam@stonybrook.edu
MEGAN HAHN
School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences
Lab: Nolwenn Dheilly
Megan is a fourth year PhD candidate in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Her research focuses on using the threespine stickleback fish and its tapeworm parasite Schistocephalus solidus to develop an organismal model system to study the role of microbes in host parasite interactions. She primarily utilizes lab experiments in conjunction with next generation sequencing technologies to investigate host and parasite associated microbes, the impact of the parasite on host associated microbes, and the potential for host-parasite-microbe coevolution in this system. Megan’s goal is for her research to help inform medical policy and to give way to new therapeutic strategies to prevent and treat tapeworm infections.
Email: megan.hahn@stonybrook.edu
JESSICA MAGHAKIAN
Applied Mathematics and Statistics
Lab: Zhenhua Liu
Jessica Maghakian is a PhD student and NSF GRFP Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Her research addresses the challenge of designing optimization algorithms that are required to make decisions in real-time, with imperfect knowledge of the future. As real-time optimization becomes more widespread in application areas such as the smart grid, autonomous vehicles and cloud computing, reliable algorithms with theoretical performance guarantees become all the more necessary.
Email: jessica.maghakian@stonybrook.edu
ANNA MCPHERRAN
Ecology & Evolution
Lab: Liliana Davalos
Anna McPherran obtained her BA in Biology from Queens College before beginning her doctorate in Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook. She also worked as a science communicator for four years at the New York Hall of Science, where she directly served students of all ages in her own community. Anna is broadly interested in how human social and economic systems affect extinctions and conservation of neotropical mammals. For her dissertation, she is interested using an interdisciplinary approach spanning from genomics to the social sciences to understand the impacts of human activity on hutias (native Caribbean rodents) through multiple points in time and space.
Email: anna.mcpherran@stonybrook.edu
JOSUE NASSAR
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Lab: Mónica Bugallo
Josue is PhD student in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Under
the supervision of Drs. Mónica Bugallo and Il Memming Park, the goal of his research
is to create Bayesian machine learning algorithms for neural data that allow for interpretable
results to be obtained.
Email: josue.nassar@stonybrook.edu
ALYSSA STANSFIELD
School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences
Lab: Kevin Reed
Alyssa Stansfield is a PhD student in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
working with Dr. Kevin Reed. She graduated from Rutgers University in May 2017 with
her B.S. in meteorology and physical oceanography. She utilizes climate models to
study tropical cyclones and investigate how these powerful storms will change under
the effects of climate change. While in the STRIDE program, she hopes to develop skills
to effectively communicate future results of her research to the public and policymakers
so that society can mitigate the damages due to tropical cyclones in the future.
Email: alyssa.stansfield@stonybrook.edu
STRIDE Fellows