Rebecca Albright
Assistant Curator, Invertebrate Zoology and Geology
Coral reef biology

My research focuses on the capacity of benthic marine organisms to cope with changing environmental conditions. Specifically, I have devoted the last ten years to understanding how coral reef organisms are impacted by changing seawater chemistry (ocean acidification), alone and in combination with warming.

Marie Angel, Geology
Curatorial Assistant, Geology

I joined the Academy in 2018 as a part-time Curatorial Assistant in Geology. From 2019-2022, I worked on a NSF OCE grant: The Holocene and Anthropocene as windows into the future of marine systems. As part of this, I assisted in the digitization and management of a crowd-sourced Zooniverse project which digitally transcribed over 5,000 records from our microfossil collection. My other duties include collections care of our fossil and mineral collections, volunteer supervision, specimen digitization, and data cleaning. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a M.A.

Ariel Berenyi-Tonesi, Geology
Curatorial Assistant, Geology

My name is Ariel Berenyi-Tonesi, though I usually just go by Ariel Tonesi. I am a recent graduate from UC Davis in Biology with a minor in Geology, and am excited to start as the new curatorial assistant in the geologic collections. I speak two languages, Italian and English, and hold dual citizenships. Like many others in the field of paleontology, I grew up loving dinosaurs and museums. Having lived in the East Bay my whole life, I quickly learned to love Bay Area paleontology and wanted to work towards aiding in the preservation of natural resources as a whole.

PimBongaerts
McCosker Chair of Aquatic Biology, Assistant Curator

I’m interested in the ecology and evolution of tropical reef-building corals, from close to the surface to well into the twilight zone. As a molecular ecologist, I combine genomics and field ecology to understand how corals diversify and adapt to different environmental conditions. Much of my research has focused on studying genetic patterns “across the reef slope” (over depth), piecing together the evolutionary processes that have led to those patterns, and inferring how those patterns impact the interconnectivity of shallow and deep reef habitats.

Crystal Cortez, Geology Collections Manager
Collections Manager, Geology

Crystal is a Mexican-American vertebrate paleontologist with over 10 years of experience working with geological and paleontological collections. She holds degrees in Geology (BS) and Environmental Science (MSc). Her research interests include Cenozoic fossil shark assemblages and conservation paleobiology topics.

Headshot of Christine Garcia
Research Associate, Geology

Christine is a Research Associate in Geology and previously served as Collections Manager and the EPICC (Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic) project manager at CAS. Her research focuses on environmental and paleoenvironmental reconstructions of marine ecosystems utilizing microfossil assemblages, and how this data can inform future predictions for these ecosystems in the face of climate change.

 

 

 

Senior Research Associate, Invertebrate Zoology and Geology
Invertebrate Zoology, History of Science
Senior Curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology
Molluscan Evolution, Systematics and Diversification- Conservation of Marine Ecosystems

 

 

Liz Kools, Invertebrate Zoology
Senior Curatorial Assistant, Invertebrate Zoology
Johanna Loacker, IZ
Curatorial Assistant, Invertebrate Zoology

I am a Curatorial Assistant in the Recent Invertebrate Collection at the California Academy of Sciences. I started as a volunteer in the department in 2014 and joined as a full time in 2017. My work currently is focused on digitizing our collections as part of the NSF funded DigIn Grant. The Invertebrate Zoology collection is aiming to digitize 56,000 marine non-molluscan specimen lots over the next 3 years.

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