Alison Minerovic

I was first introduced to diatoms while working at an environmental consulting firm as a lab assistant. I fell so in love with them that I dug them out of sediment cores and reconstructed the eutrophication history of reservoirs in the Muskingum River Watershed, Ohio, which helped me earn a M.S. in biology at John Carroll University. Upon completing my degree I accepted a position at the Academy of Natural Sciences, where I currently work on a long-term, collaborative water quality monitoring effort in the Delaware River Watershed. I am also pursuing my Ph.D. in environmental science at Drexel University, using this watershed as my study location. I am interested in the use of diatoms as indicators of stream health, but more importantly I aim to better understand the foundation upon which water quality metrics and indices are developed - their taxonomy and evolutionary history.