Get to Know GSO

The Graduate School of Oceanography is a community of coastal and ocean scientists, engineers, students, policy experts, administrators, communicators and educators. Our Get to Know GSO series is an introduction to the people who make this school such a special place!

New videos are posted every other week to GSO’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts — be sure to follow #GTKGSO.

Made possible by the Devereux Ocean Foundation.

GSO Students

Frankie Lopez

Ph.D. student Frankie Lopez studies planktonic food webs on the northeast U.S. shelf with the Menden-Deuer Plankton Ecology Lab. Hailing from the West Coast, she found community at events hosted by Chowder & Marching, and is now the president!

Get to Know Frankie

Izak Hill

Izak Hill is a Ph.D. student in the Lohmann Lab, a STEEP Superfund trainee, and an ORISE Research Fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Atlantic Ecology Division. He combines his passion for fishing with his research on PFAS in aquatic ecosystems!

Get to know Izak

Melissa Woodward

When Ph.D. candidate Melissa isn’t developing tools to measure contaminants in the air with GSO’s Lohmann Lab, she’s enjoying all the ocean state has to offer.

Meet Melissa

Philip Yang

From grasslands to wetlands?! Before studying coral reefs at GSO, Ph.D. student Philip Yang was a biological science tech for the US Forest Service in South Dakota.

Meet Philip

Lindsay Grose

Lindsay’s research focuses on understanding the process of “interleaving”—when two different water masses, like warm salty water and cold fresh water, meet and mix.

Meet Lindsay
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GSO Faculty & Postdocs

Steve D’Hondt

GSO professor Steven D’Hondt is best known for studying life beneath the sea floor. But how many salmon passed through his hands as a salmon processor in Alaska?

Meet Steve

Kelton McMahon

Kelton’s research focuses on how food web architecture influences marine ecosystem function and resilience, and how climate change and human-environment interactions alter those relationships.

Meet Kelton

Hongjie Wang

Meet Hongjie, assistant professor of oceanography at GSO. She studies carbon cycle responses to global climate change & anthropogenic stressors in different ecosystems.

Meet Hongjie

Rainer Lohmann

Professor Rainer Lohmann works with GSO graduate students to figure out what happens to manmade pollutants, or forever chemicals, that contaminate our environment.

Meet Rainer
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GSO Staff

Matt Cavaco

From the military to the fire department, Matt Cavaco has spent the majority of his career in civil service roles. Since retiring from the Coast Guard, he finds purpose in making sure missions run smoothly on RV Endeavor as our marine logistics coordinator.

Get to know Matt

Princess Metuge

Meet Princess, our assistant dean of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI)! She’s the point person for building a culture that promotes these four core values and makes the Bay Campus a welcoming place for all.

Meet Princess

Jackie Witterschein

At the URI Coastal Institute, Jackie serves as lead for the Climate Response Demonstration Sites, which test, monitor, and demonstrate ecosystem and community-response climate response strategies.

Meet Jackie

Mackensie duPont Crowley

On team Public Engagement, Mackensie works closely with Bay Campus students, faculty, and staff to share their science in a way that is both salient and interesting to the public.

Meet Mackensie
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