Elise comes to UVA after graduating from William & Mary (2020) with a BS in Biology and Environmental Science & Policy. Her main research interests are shoreline resilience and coastal ecology. As a graduate student she will study how seagrass meadows influence wave dynamics and sediment transport at the VCR-LTER. Her undergraduate research addressed differences in habitat quality between natural marshes and manmade living shorelines by studying grass shrimp populations. She has also used remote sensing techniques to measure anthropogenic light pollution in a range of ecosystems as an intern for NASA's Develop Program.