Heather Richard passed her comprehensive exam, which means she is advancing to PhD candidacy!! Heather’s research focuses on how land use and water infrastrucure changes the dynamics of salt marshes and their tidal creeks, which alters their microbial communities, biochemical processes, and capacity to sequester atmospheric carbon in sediment. She details that work, including field sampling and labwork protocols, as well as data visualization and major findings, on an interactive website she created to support research into salt marshes in Maine.

Heather joined the University of Maine in 2021 as a PhD student with the Maine eDNA program and studies the impacts of bridges and roads on microbial communities in salt marsh habitats. Her background in Ecology led her to pursue a career in informal environmental education for several years before getting a Master’s degree in Marine Biology from San Francisco State University studying biofilms on microplastics pollution. Upon returning to Maine in 2016 she led local research for a coastal non-profit organization and has since been dedicated to studying coastal environmental issues relevant to Maine. She has found a true passion in bioinformatic analysis and is eager to learn new tools for data analysis of all kinds. 

The exam involved writing mini-papers around topics assigned by her committee, including decision-making and troubleshooting for sequencing data analysis, biogeochemical processes in salt marshes that drive carbon sequestration or release, and microbial ecology in coastal ecosystems. Each set of questions were released once a day for 5 days, and mini-papers took 6 -8 hours to complete and had to be returned within 24 hours. This intensive series of written exams were followed by a two-hour question-and-answer session in which Heather gave further detail on her written answers, connected basic biochemical processes to broader ecosystem-level microbial ecology, and considered furture research designs. This grueling process is the last hurdle for PhD students, and now it’s “smooth sailing” until the PhD defense. Over the next year or so, Heather will perform metegenomics sequencing data analysis from her salt marsh sites, and synthesizing microbial and biochemical data into several manuscripts which we will submit to scientific journals for peer review, and eventual publication.