Décima Lab

Dante is a 2nd year PhD Student in Biological Oceanography hailing from Sebastopol in Northern California. He earned a BS in Earth Sciences-Ocean Sciences concentration and a BS in Marine Biology from University of California, Santa Cruz. After spending his final quarter studying abroad at the University of Queensland he returned to Sebastopol to work in the Coastal Oceanography Group at the Bodega Bay Marine Lab.

The intense California wildfires during Dante's first research cruise in August 2020 inspired his research interests in the effects of the wildfires on the marine environment. For his dissertation research Dante is examining how smoke and ash from wildfires may impact the carbon cycle and the pelagic planktonic community in the California Current ecosystem. Dante is also a member of the Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research (PIER), seeking to collaborate with non-scientist experts, especially artists to make findings more accessible.

Outside of research Dante enjoys physical activity especially running, yoga, skateboarding, cycling, and swimming and is a member of the San Diego Track Club Elite running group. Dante also likes to work his creative side through sourdough bread baking and art. After a long lab day at SIO, Dante's go to refreshment is a dip in the Pacific ocean.

Anya Štajner is a PhD student in the biological oceanography program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She completed her undergraduate’s degree at the University of California, Davis where she studied Marine and Coastal Sciences with an Emphasis in Organismal Biology and Ecology. She did undergraduate research on teleost fish morphology as well as factors affecting the consumption rates of larval fish by juvenile velella velellas.

In graduate school, Anya is interested in determining how California fires affect our ocean and plans to look at the affects of ash on phytoplankton communities. When she’s not studying Anya brews kombucha, runs the collective blog for women in science SciGal Collective, and produces episodes of her pop-marine-science podcast, Wet.

Hannah is a 4th year undergraduate student currently pursuing an honors thesis using bioinformatics to study the zooplankton composition relating to environmental conditions in different water masses near New Zealand. She will be graduating with a BS in General Biology and a BA in History of Science. Previously, she has performed research developing gene-editing technologies for prevention of vector-borne diseases and pest control in Drosophila. She first joined the Décima Lab in summer 2022 as an undergraduate research fellow studying zooplankton composition in the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) as part of the CCE LTER REU program.
In her free time, Hannah also enjoys STEM outreach, works in the Basic Needs Department on campus, and has a variety of grandma-esque hobbies, including reading, going for walks, and crocheting. She also enjoys playing various instruments and rock climbing (when she doesn't fall off the wall).