Here’s to the first feature Friday. Most Friday’s, I will highlight an outstanding familiar face in natural resources.

For our first feature, we have Miss Alexus Roberts, whom I have had the pleasure of working with for the last couple of years. Alexus graduated from Purdue University last weekend with a Bachelor of Science in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Sciences and a minor in Chemistry. During her undergrad, she worked on two main research projects at Purdue. The first was a continuation of the research that she started at an internship at Friday Harbor Labs. In this project, she studied the evolutionary patterns of the jaws and jaw muscles in sculpins and related species. The second project looked at how environmental conditions affected habitat preference in killifish and related species.

In the Fall of 2017, Alexus will start a Ph.D. program in the Population Biology group at the University of California, Davis. There she will be studying how diversity in the morphological traits and functional mechanisms of fishes has evolved and allowed these creatures to adapt and coexist in a variety of habitats and conditions.

When asked what additional information she wanted to share, she replied “I just want to encourage students to work hard. No matter what they want to do in the future, I urge them to define a goal and to do everything possible to achieve it. Honestly, no one could have told me 4 years ago that I would be where I am today and that I would accomplish so much. So my challenge to them is to dream big and just go for it with all they have.”

Congratulations to Alexus and Boiler Up!

If you have an outstanding familiar face that you think should be featured, send me an email at thefamiliarfacesproject@gmail.com with their information! Think you’re pretty awesome? Tell me all about yourself!

Photos used with permission by Alexus Roberts.