I am Adib Mustofa, a first-year PhD student in Dr. Carly Kenkel’s Lab and in USC’s Marine and Environmental Biology program. I have been in love with coral reefs since 2010 when I joined a sailing program in the Spermonde Archipelago located in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. During this program, I had a chance to snorkel and see magnificent coral reefs for the first time. In 2016, I scuba dove in different parts of Indonesia and found an extensive area of damaged corals. That experience encouraged me to study coral reefs and take action to protect this vulnerable ecosystem. Two years later, I init ..read more

The first two weeks of July of 2023 have seen a constant stream of anxiety-provoking news headlines pointing to record-breaking heat in metropolitan areas around the United States. Unfortunately, these headlines leave little work for me to do in justifying the importance and urgency of studying measures to protect the public from extreme heat.  My name is Aviva Wolf-Jacobs, and broadly speaking, I am interested in how urban green space can be used as a tool to promote public health and environmental justice in cities. For the purposes of my work, the term urban green space refers to trees ..read more

Let me be upfront – I have not found the secret to eternal youth. As I rock with the motion of the ocean, floating in the middle of the water column surrounded by the rippling gold-brown of giant kelp, I’ve been studying what happens on a molecular level when kelp, a seaweed that creates huge underwater forests, ages and decays. Inside kelp cells and tissue, what signals precede the onset of deterioration? How does kelp function change with age? How does older tissue interact with younger tissue? These are all questions I aim to answer as a rising 5th year PhD candidate in USC’s Marine and Env ..read more