Dr. Cori Lopazanski is an applied marine ecologist who uses field experiments, monitoring studies, and quantitative synthesis to evaluate and inform conservation and management. She integrates basic theory with large datasets to answer actionable questions about fish habitat, fish communities, and fishery dynamics. She earned her PhD from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she evaluated pathways for marine protected areas to succeed as conservation interventions and led analyses for the 10-year evaluation of California’s Marine Protected Area Network. She earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked on multiple projects related to the population ecology of estuarine fishes and the natural history of biogenic habitats. Cori is passionate about mentoring students and making science accessible – she spent two years growing and directing a paired graduate-undergraduate internship program to build more inclusive pathways into environmental research.