Molly Reichert, an undergraduate who participated on two of the POWOW research cruises in the Pacific Ocean, presented her final research project today. Her research project was part of her EOS graduation with distinction honors thesis. Her project focused on using size fractionated chlorophyll across ocean scale environmental gradients in the Pacific Ocean to determine how temperature and other variables affect the level of phytoplankton in the open ocean. Molly showed that while temperature plays an important role in structuring phytoplankton communities, other variables such as nutrients and mixing, are also important. Molly, a NSF GRFP fellowship award recipient, will attend graduate school at Georgia Tech in Fall 2014 focusing her research on coral reef restoration.