People

Dr. Kishore Gopalakrishnan

Kishore Gopalakrishnan is a Postdoctoral research fellow whose primary research interests are algal biotechnology research including investigating and developing algae as a platform for energy, food supplement, stabilizing agent and pollution control. His current research focuses on characterization of spawning inhibiting cues from algae to control dreissenid mussels.

Brittanie Dabney

Brittanie Dabney is a PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow, she studied the impacts of metals and fine-sediment loading on Rocky Mountain aquatic ecosystems and received a masters degree in Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. She later received her second masters in Environmental Toxicology at Texas Tech studying the growth of harmful alga exposed to low-doses of pesticides. 

Darrin Hunt

Darrin Hunt is a PhD candidate whose dissertation research centers on the physical impacts of invasive bivalves on benthic macroinvertebrate and fish communities in urban streams. Darrin has won teaching awards for assisting in the development of curriculum to be used with incoming honors students in the biological sciences, and has recently co-authored a peer reviewed web publication funded by Michigan Sea Grant. 

Héctor Esparra-Escalera

Héctor Esparra-Escalera is native from Puerto Rico and current Ph.D. student at WSU. His main research interests focus on freshwater systems. Particularly morphological taxonomy and ecology of freshwater macroinvertebrates, organisms associated to plankton and benthos in different streams and reservoirs, and the evaluation of nutrient cycle and periphyton biomass development.

Katrina Lewandowski

Katrina Lewandowski is a Master’s student. She completed her B.S. degree from the University of Michigan in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2015. Katrina recently worked as an Urban Wildlife Research Intern and volunteered with the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago assisting with wildlife monitoring and ecology research along an urban-exurban gradient.