Postdoctoral Investigators

Alina Spera

Alina joined WHOI in August as a postdoctoral researcher! She is studying the physical and biogeochemical effects of saltwater intrusion on Arctic coastal systems.

Graduate Students

Abigail Bonnington

Abigail is a PhD student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program studying the impacts of groundwater extraction on relative sea level rise and coastal flooding. She graduated from Dalhousie University’s Bachelor of Engineering in Environmental Engineering program in 2023 where a graduate course in Coastal Water Resources and a research project with the Dalhousie Coastal Hydrology Lab sparked her passion for coastal engineering. She joined the Piecuch Lab after a year working in the water resources consulting industry with WSP Canada. At WHOI, Abigail is co-advised by Julia Guimond, Chris Piecuch, and Catherine Walker. When she’s not on campus, she can be found bouldering at the nearest climbing gym, playing board games with her roommates, or reading at the beach.

Past Summer Undergraduate Students

Mikayla Bechtel

Mikayla is a Summer Student Fellow (SSF) at WHOI, exploring the temporal, spatial, and physical variability in plant spectra across an eastern marshland at Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, MA. She is attending Johns Hopkins University and will graduate with a BS & MS in Environmental Engineering in the spring of 2025. Her desire to pursue environmental engineering and coastal research was sparked by her yearly summers on Cape Cod and noticing how the oceans and marshlands have altered over time. She is interested in understanding the role climate change plays in these changes. This summer, Mikayla is learning a great deal about marshland fieldwork and data analysis. Mikayla loves hiking, reading, watching sunsets, and going to the beach.

Isis Mocino Sanchez

Isis is an undergraduate student at the University of Guanajuato, majoring in mathematical computation. Since she was a child she has been interested in mathematics, which led her to participate in several competitions and olympiads, an experience that motivated her to become coordinator of the girl’s mathematics olympiad of the state of Guanajuato. In recent years she has developed a liking for programming, especially for data structures and algorithms. Her goal is to be able to apply her knowledge to study and try to solve real life problems.